“Hector Young and I have worked as attorneys for Hector Young and Associates for about eight years. We often work as a team on company business. That’s why we were in Nevis. For proprietary reasons, I would prefer not to discuss the specifics of our business. During the course of my time here, I have become acquainted with Vanessa Hardy. On the day in question, I attended a gathering at Ms. Hardy’s house. Hector Young came as a guest of mine, and we mixed and mingled during the afternoon. Mr. Young left before I did. I met up with him later in the afternoon, down on the boardwalk. I figured he would be down there since it’s such a beautiful area and we had spent a lot of free time down there. I was right and did find him there, sitting on a bench.
“He made several insulting remarks about Ms. Hardy, and in defense of her honor, I grabbed him by the shirt collar and exchanged some heated words with him. I ended up shoving him back down on a bench, which tipped over with him still on it. At that point, I walked away. I didn’t see him again until the emergency team pulled him from the water, and I did a tentative identification.”
Ryan paused and looked McCall in the eyes. “It’s true, I did threaten to kill him, but only if he continued to impugn Ms. Hardy’s character. She’s a nice lady, and I didn’t think she deserved that. I did lose my temper. I regret what I said, but I didn’t mean it. Had we gotten into it again, I might well have hit him a couple of times with a fist, but murder, hardly. I knew there were other people on the boardwalk when I said what I did. Why would I say something so incriminating in front of witnesses if I really meant it?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Thomas. Why would you? Considering that Mr. Young is dead, it’s a pretty damning admission you’ve made here.”
“Listen, Hector Young is—was—a self-serving ass, but I didn’t kill him. We’ve had a working relationship for eight years. He’s been an ass ever since I met him. Why would I suddenly kill him now?”
“I don’t know a lot, Mr. Thomas, but one thing I do know is that a man will do strange things for a woman—things he may not normally think he’s capable of.” Officer McCall paused and looked at Ryan, but Ryan didn’t bite.
“I’ll miss him. He was good competition—kept me on edge. I can’t believe he’s gone.” Ryan sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“Would you like to take a brief break, Mr. Thomas?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just, I was so upset that night, and it was so dark … What if it wasn’t Hector? That isn’t possible, is it? There are counterchecks to make sure there was no mistake. Someone in the family has identified the body?” He looked at Officer McCall with the most distraught face he could muster.
“Currently, no one from the family has come forward to identify the body. As a coworker, your identification of the body was considered sufficient and spares the family the trauma of viewing the body. You aren’t recanting that identification, are you?”
“It was such a shock. What if I made a mistake? You’d put the wrong man in the grave,” he said, his voice rising. He put his head in his hands.
“Mr. Thomas. That just wouldn’t happen. Do you need a break to pull yourself together? If it would make you feel better, more sure, I can arrange for you to view the body again.”
Ryan pulled his head up from his hands. “Yes, yes. Could you do that? I’m going to have nightmares over this. Poor Hector.” He put his head back in his hands.
Officer McCall sighed and pulled out his cell phone. “Arrange a viewing of the Young body by a Mr. Ryan Thomas, as soon as possible … I’ll hold …” He checked his watch. “Yes, twenty minutes … Right. Thanks.” He flipped his phone shut. “Let’s go, Mr. Thomas.”
Ryan took a couple of deep breaths and got up. “I need to use the bathroom first—do you mind?” He shuffled down the hall to the men’s room. Once inside, he leaned against the sink and checked his e-mails for a while before leaning over and flushing the toilet. After washing his hands, he walked out to find Officer McCall leaning against the wall, waiting.
A short car ride took them to the morgue. Even with death the one absolute certainty in life, the morgue looked like an afterthought. Located to the rear of a commercial building in the downtown area, it was marked by a small green striped awning and a row of parking spaces designated “Morgue Customers Only.”
The small, sterile parlor, adorned with pictures of pleasant streams and mountains, did little to make either man feel comfortable, and a pall immediately fell over their mood. Elmer Dyson, a young man with freckles and a shock of red hair, was waiting for them and had already pulled the drawer open. A sheet covered the body of the deceased.
Ryan scanned the rest of the rows and columns of drawers, and a shiver ran down his spine. Hopefully, they were all empty. There was a disturbing smell. Whether it was death, mortuary chemicals, or both, he didn’t know, but it immediately brought to mind funeral parlors. This would be a quick business.
Ryan and Officer McCall approached the body, and the attendant pulled back the sheet from the face with a theatrical flourish. “Ta da,” he said.
Ryan did a double take. Officer McCall gave the attendant a look that could kill, and moved him out of the way with the sheer mass of his body.
“Sorry,” the attendant mumbled, his face red. “I’m the only one here—well, sort of,” he added, looking back over his shoulder.
Ryan took one look and quickly walked out of the room.
McCall signaled the attendant to cover the body again and followed Ryan out into the hall. “Good. See, Mr. Thomas, you can rest easy now. Mr. Young is in good ha—”
“That’s not Hector,” Ryan blurted. “It’s Earl Jackson, my other coworker. That’s the same body I looked at last night?” He turned to McCall. “Where’s Hector’s body? Both my coworkers are dead?”
“This is the only body. You’re telling me this isn’t Hector Young? You identified him. He had ID on him, and you confirmed his identity. You aren’t playing games with me, are you, Mr. Thomas? It’s a punishable offense to make false statements to the police.”
“No, no games. It was such a shock,” Ryan stammered. “You had his wallet … It was dark, and I didn’t look but for an instant—dead bodies give me the creeps … I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t mean to deceive or hinder your investigation. It’s Earl. I’m sure, one hundred percent sure. He was in town. Hector said so.”
McCall approached Ryan, who instinctively stiffened. The officer grabbed him by the shirtsleeve and pulled him closer. “I’m gonna say this one time, so listen close. Nevis is a nice little town—good people. We don’t go out of our way to tell other folks how to live their lives, and we take care of our own. It doesn’t take a lot to see that you and yours are bad news for our town. I don’t know much about you or your New York friend, Mr. Thomas, but I aim to find out. In the meantime, I’m gonna suggest you leave Nevis and don’t come back unless we send for you. I see you around here again screwing with my town, things could get uncomfortable.”
His hot breath stirred the contents of Ryan’s stomach.
“It wouldn’t be too smart to put your hands on a New York lawyer,” said Ryan, wondering if the morgue attendant was still within earshot. “Now, am I free to go?”
McCall released his grip and straightened Ryan’s shirt. “I think we’re good.”
McCall drove him as far as the boardwalk and made him get out—not fast enough, as far as Ryan was concerned. Ryan power walked to the motel, packed his bags, and was driving north to New York within the half hour.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A WILL, A WAY, AND SOME MONEY
The new identification of the boardwalk drowning victim forced the Nevis police into a whole new theory. An initial investigation that seemed to be an open-and-shut case incriminating Ryan Thomas fell apart with a resounding thud. Not to be burned a second time, the police summoned Earl Jackson’s parents to Nevis to identify their son’s remains. Once again Elmer Dyson found himself standing at the head of the sheet-covere
d corpse, waiting to unveil the victim’s face.
“Okay, Dyson, please pull the sheet back so Mr. and Mrs. Jackson can see. Easy does it,” McCall said, with a withering look.
Elmer pulled the sheet back with no flourish or commentary of any kind and stepped back from the body with his head down.
“Yes, that’s him. That’s my baby,” Mrs. Jackson said, and she pressed her face into the chest of her silent, stone-faced husband. Her sobs filled the little building as Mr. Jackson escorted her from the room.
The bigger question of why the deceased was carrying the identification of a coworker, Hector Young, and the current whereabouts of that coworker began to consume and overwhelm the finite resources of Nevis’s little police force. But what the Nevis police lacked in size and finesse, it more than made up for with the determination of Officer McCall.
McCall sat at his desk, drumming with his pencil eraser on his mouse pad. He was a big man, but he was not a happy big man. With a pit bull’s tenacity, he was not one to let a case go until he was satisfied with the answers to every question.
“McCall, how ’bout another cup?” Officer Little asked, holding up a mug.
“Bug off, Mike. I can’t think with you waving that around.”
“Why don’t you just call this an accident and let it go.”
“Nah, that sounds like something you would do. Me … something isn’t right here. What am I missing?” He absentmindedly picked up the phone ringing at his elbow.
“McCall … Yes! How long ago did he regain consciousness? … On my way. Mike,” he said, turning to his partner, who was still at the coffeemaker, “I’m off to the hospital. Ernest Pickett just regained consciousness, but he’s still in critical condition. I’m going to try and get a statement from him.”
The Nevis police had placed around-the-clock protection at the hospital as soon as they realized Pickett might be a potential witness in the drowning case. His awakening was the first opportunity to determine what he might have seen or heard. Officer McCall wasted no time in getting to the hospital to see him.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said to the officer standing guard at the door to Pickett’s hospital room. “Come back in about fifteen minutes.”
“Officer, before you go in may I have a word with you, please?” asked a petite nurse at the nurses’ station. “Just a word of caution. We need Mr. Pickett to remain calm. You might want to avoid mentioning Susie. He keeps asking for her. We keep trying to tell him his wife is deceased, but he just gets terribly angry. It’s not what he needs.”
“Ma’am,” McCall said, taking his hat off as he leaned down toward her. “Ms. Stewart,” he said, reading her name tag but trying not to offend her by staring at her chest too long, “I don’t believe Mr. Pickett’s wife’s name was Susie. It was Alice. His dog is Susie, and she’s safe and sound. A neighbor found her running loose on the boardwalk.” He gave her a shy, boyish smile and put his hat back on.
“Lord Almighty, I guess he would be upset, then, wouldn’t he?” Nurse Stewart said. “All right, then,” she said, and she smiled back at him in her own shy way. “I think it’s all right for you to go in, then. Just don’t tire him out—he needs his rest.”
McCall entered the hospital room to find Pickett hooked up to a skein of tubes and monitor wires. Hospitals freaked him out. He and his partner put their lives on the line every day, even in a small town like Nevis, and this was one place he wanted to stay the hell away from. He slowly approached the bed where the patient lay under a sheet not much whiter than his face. The old man didn’t move or acknowledge his visitor in any way.
“Mr. Pickett, I’m Officer McCall. I’d like to ask you a few questions about the night you got hurt, if you don’t mind.”
The old man opened his eyes and looked at the officer but didn’t say a word. He just frowned and continued to stare.
“May I have your full name, Mr. Pickett?” McCall asked.
“You just addressed me by name, you jackass. Get on with your questions,” Pickett growled through his clenched jaw. His dentures still floated in a glass beside the bed. His blazing eyes assured McCall that he was lucid enough to continue.
“Mr. Pickett, what were you doing the night of your attack?”
“I took Susie for a walk along the boardwalk, just like I do every night. Damn people walk their dogs along my property in front and ruin the grass. I don’t let my dog do that. Where’s Susie?”
“Susie’s fine. She is with your next-door neighbor, Ms. Hardy.”
For an instant, almost imperceptibly, the corners of Pickett’s mouth crept up. “She’d better take good care of her until I come and get her.” He struggled to sit up amid the tubes and wires but soon gave it up. “I’ll sue—”
“Yes, sir,” McCall interrupted. “I’ll tell her. Everything’s fine; Susie’s fine. Now, can you tell me what happened on the boardwalk when you were walking Susie? Did you see Earl Jackson, the man from New York?”
“I saw two men on the boardwalk … arguing. They were standing in the middle, blocking the way, ’specially the big guy. I was getting ready to give them a piece of my mind. Bastards, scaring my Susie! I pay taxes! I should be allowed to walk in town without having to walk around people. Sue all their asses! Yeah, I saw ’em. They were arguing. Big one cussing the little one out. The son of a bitch stabbed him and pushed him into the water. I tried to yell for help, but the pain in my chest … I couldn’t help the man. Oh, my God, the pain in my chest …” His hand went to his chest, and he began to gasp for air.
McCall grabbed his hand and drew in close to him. “Mr. Pickett,” he whispered, “who stabbed him?” Was it Ryan Thomas? Hector Young?”
“No, damn fool,” Picket whispered. “The biker—big guy, red beard … Rusty …”
Pickett’s hand went limp, his body gave a jerk, and the monitor at his bedside began to flash and beep. Suddenly, nurses, a crash cart, and emergency personnel materialized from nowhere, buzzing into the room like bees from a hive.
McCall found himself shoved out of the room and forced to stand in the corridor. His mind raced. A biker, and not just any biker. Rusty Clark, the biggest, meanest enforcer the Diablo biker gang ever had. More questions. Was this a chance encounter—wrong place, wrong time—or was there a connection between the New York man and the Diablos? McCall paced impatiently, drumming his fingers on his notepad, waiting for his chance to reenter the room. He approached the first nurse who came out the door: the same little nurse he had spoken with earlier.
“Excuse me, ma’am, Ms. Stewart,” he said. “It’s important that I finish up my conversation with Mr. Pickett. Will that be possible tonight?”
She looked up with her big brown eyes. I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m afraid Mr. Pickett just passed. He didn’t make it.” She gave a little half-stifled sob.
McCall’s eyes bulged as Ms. Stewart scurried on down the corridor. He watched her for a moment, then left the hospital, hat in hand and with no plan in mind.
*
For all McCall’s professionalism and thoroughness in investigating the case, he was smart enough to weigh the bang for the buck and consider calling it quits when the costs outweighed the benefits—especially the benefits to him personally. The Diablos and Rusty Clark were too much to chew without a live witness. Still, McCall was taken aback when, one afternoon, he received a call about the case.
“Meet me at Tenth and Walnut at two p.m. I have information about the Earl Jackson case. My client doesn’t like publicity.”
At Tenth and Walnut, a man of small build approached McCall and handed him a large envelope. “I think this will be enough to complete your investigation. The evidence inside exonerates Hector Young and supports a finding of accidental drowning.”
Officer McCall took the envelope and thumbed through the contents. Just as the man had predicted, the stack of crisp hundred-dollar bills attested to Mr. Young’s innocence and pointed instead to an accidental tumble into the cold waters of the
Chesapeake Bay. “Looks just about right,” said McCall without missing a beat. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
DADDY ISSUES
Van and Jean wasted no time searching for the missing descendants of Jeremiah Harwell. Van knew the documents housed in the courthouse well enough, but sharing the librarian’s limited expertise and time with other patrons made the search unproductive, especially when one voracious researcher kept the librarian in constant motion.
Van put her head down on the stack of books and crossed her arms over her head. “Jean, I have run out of options,” she said. “I don’t even know where else to look. Maybe I should try to hire someone to pick up the trail. I’m thinking … See the lady at that front table over there? Nice clothes, expensive jewelry?”
“Yeah, I’ve been hating on her a while, too.”
Van laughed quietly. “Besides that. Dressed like that, she’s obviously not from around here. She’s kept the librarian hoofing, using some of the same resources that we have. Some documents haven’t even been filed back before she has them at her table. She’s doing genealogical research, too.”
Jean watched the woman for a moment, then whispered, “Maybe we—meaning you, of course—should strike up a conversation with her.”
“I love the way you think,” said Van, and she got up from their table and walked over to where the stranger sat.
“Excuse me, I hate to bother you,” she said. “I couldn’t help but notice some of the references you’re using. Are you a genealogist?”
The woman looked up and laughed. “I am. May I help you with something?” Her voice was quiet and polished, and she exuded a confidence and authority that was a bit intimidating. Van took an instant liking to her.
The Pickle Boat House Page 13