Since Brenda’s mom had been a Turner, she swore her tale of a prodigal son, a mad-as-a-hatter grandmother, a randy papa, and a sprinkling of out-of-wedlock offspring was the absolute truth. When she finished, I teased her. “You sure you didn’t add a little southern seasoning to Days of Our Lives?”
“You want off the hook today?” Tammy asked. “Don’t imagine you had time to prepare anything.”
“Au contraire. Given recent, uh, events, I had a strong incentive to bone up on what’s known in the trade as ECDs—electronic control devices. Nothing like firsthand experience to sharpen your thirst for knowledge.”
During my ferry ride to the mainland, I’d culled tidbits from my friend Steve’s emails to create a short op-ed. I began with definitions. “All ECDs, including stun guns and Tasers, use electricity—up to fifty-thousand volts—to stun and incapacitate. That’s enough to reduce a three-hundred-pound gorilla to a quivering pile of misfired neurons.”
Tammy interrupted. “God, can you electrocute someone with an ECD?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Legit models limit dosage. Once the probes make contact, the ECD sends impulses in pre-set waves. In fact, the Taser I carry at work is preset to deliver a five-second jolt.
“The ECDs won’t kill, even if the perp is standing in three feet of water. Some deaths have been reported, but they’ve mostly been tied to drug overdoses or extenuating circumstances. As a multiple jolt recipient, I’m happy to report studies have found no long-lasting side effects.”
Brenda waggled her fingers, signaling a question. “What if the bad guy’s a biker dude in a thick leather jacket?”
“No problemo. The probes will zap through two inches of clothing. Tasers have plenty of law enforcement fans. I’m one. Suppose some sky-high PCP addict is about to attack. Shoot the guy with a pistol and you’d better hit a vital organ or it’s like popping a bear with a BB gun. These guys can be hemorrhaging and feel no pain.”
Tammy cleared her throat. “I’m all for cops having ECDs. But what about bad guys? Can anyone buy one?”
“’Fraid so. Order one over the Internet and UPS will deliver it to your door. But reputable providers do background checks. Plus, in theory, owners are easy to trace. The guns eject a kind of confetti when they’re fired, littering the crime scene with tiny shards that identify the gun and original purchaser.”
Tammy cut in. “Hey, does that mean the sheriff can track the weapon used on you?”
We’d come to the crux of my research. Steve had reached the same conclusion as Braden. “No. An East European manufacturer is producing an ECD for police and military that can be fired from twenty feet. It doesn’t eject any confetti. Somehow our killer got his hands on one.”
“Well that sucks,” Tammy said.
My sentiment exactly. It meant our killer was no run-of-the-mill psychopath. He had international connections. That convinced me Stew’s and Bea’s deaths weren’t part of a random killing spree. But where was the motive? The pattern?
We signaled for our checks. As we waited, a man walked by our table, nodded to Brenda and murmured, “Nice to see you.”
“Wasn’t that Michael Beech, Esquire?” Tammy asked.
Unable to keep all the elite Beaufortonians straight, I chuckled. “You two could publish your own newspaper. I’ve never heard of Beech.”
Brenda arched an eyebrow. “You’ve never heard of anyone. He’s an attorney, but unlike hubby dear, he concentrates on nonprofit and corporate work. You know, setting up C corps and LLCs. His family came here when Robert E. Lee was in short pants. His daddy and granddaddy were attorneys, so he inherited their client base.”
She sipped her drink before she continued. “A few months back, he got caught engaging in Superman accounting. He billed a hospital for sixty hours of his time and a local business owner for seventy hours over the same three days. It was his misfortune the business owner joined the hospital board and noticed the double billing. Hearsay has it Beech needed the money to pay a gambling debt.”
“Was he disbarred?” I asked.
Brenda shook her head. “He tore up the invoices. Claimed he’d fallen victim to an accounting glitch. My husband’s angry. Says he should be penalized for violating ethics. Me? I wonder how Beech paid his bookie. He didn’t hit the lottery.”
We left the restaurant and hugged before trotting off to far-flung parking spaces. With Beaufort’s azaleas in bloom, parking was at a premium. April was the peak month for empty-nester tourists to ooh-and-ah over the quaint downtown and enjoy horse-drawn carriage rides through a historic district made famous by movies like The Big Chill and The Prince of Tides.
As I walked toward Donna’s car, I wondered how long it would be before beachcombing tourists swarmed Dear. This year I’d welcome any visitors with only sun and surf on their minds. They beat hell out of reporters with an insatiable appetite for blood.
FOURTEEN
By the time I bought everything on my dual grocery lists, my cart overflowed, and my checking account had taken a three-hundred-dollar hit. To dazzle Braden with my culinary skills, I’d splurged. The entrée would be filet mignon topped with steamed crabmeat, lobster, shrimp and white asparagus, all slathered in homemade Béarnaise sauce.
I glanced at my watch. Crapola, 3:15. I wasn’t used to timing excursions to make a four o’clock ferry. One open bridge could wreck my timetable.
Donna’s oversized trunk accommodated the purchases with ease, and I marveled once more at its pristine condition. Though I loved my vintage Mustang, my adoration fell short of a slavish devotion to auto hygiene. If I borrowed her car again, I’d spring for the deluxe package at the Carteret Street car wash where humans actually vacuumed, scrubbed and buffed.
Before I left the parking lot, I witnessed a near collision in my rearview mirror. A green SUV cut off a dawdling oldster to claim a space two cars behind me. It was a wonder the old lady didn’t keel over dead. The ranks of belligerent drivers seemed to swell by the day.
Or was someone following me? The thought flickered in and out. Who could know I was driving this car?
Frequent journeys to and from Dear Island meant I could navigate by rote. This freed me to daydream about Braden and obsess on the luncheon gossip. How did a new appraiser steal Dear’s business from Stew? What brought an East European mortgage broker to Beaufort? It seemed weird that two newbies turned up their noses at an offer to tap into the local business pipeline.
Did any of this connect to Janie’s worries about real estate fraud? I tried to picture the documents strewn across Woody’s desk. Had the newcomers’ names—Jacobs or Antolak—appeared on them?
A red light blinked ahead. I eased off the gas. The swing bridge had opened for two shrimp boats. They’d already run the steel gauntlet to head up river. Only four cars idled ahead of me. Curtailed travel to and from Dear had definitely taken a bite out of inter-island traffic flow.
I slid to a stop. Donna’s well-tuned Lexus purred so quietly I almost thought it had stalled. The wait would be short. I rolled down my passenger-side window to reduce the glare and leaned out to see if one of the homecoming captains was Janie’s most recent conquest. The boats moved at too fast a clip to decipher the names painted on the prows.
With shrimping season weeks away, the skippers had probably been after tuna, drum fish or snapper. In the wake of the vessels, sea gulls squawked and dived, quarreling over gutted remains. The scene is picturesque afar, just plain smelly and gory up close and personal.
Glancing in my rearview mirror, I noticed the rude SUV from the grocery had maneuvered directly behind me. The behemoth left a huge gap between our bumpers. That seemed out of character, given the driver’s parking lot aggression. The hairs on my neck saluted.
I studied the driver’s silhouetted head. Dark-tinted windows obscured all facial details. When the man looked left, my stomach lurched. God help me, in profile, he was a dead ringer for Underling.
Could it really be Kain’s lackey? If so, would he d
are mount an attack on a public highway?
Slowly the bridge pirouetted to close the yawning chasm between its stationary sections. I was shaken—literally—out of my macabre musings when the bridge clanged shut, and the structure shimmied in momentary aftershock. Thank goodness, I’d still make the ferry.
The cars ahead coughed to life and crept forward. I inched along behind them. The SUV maintained its wary distance. Not a good sign. My fingers tensed on the steering wheel.
Just beyond the bridge, three of the lead cars turned into the first gated enclave. The remaining auto, a black Firebird, tore off like an entry in the Indy 500. He had to be doing eighty—at least twenty-five miles over the speed limit. Where are the cops when you need them?
I was now quite alone with the green SUV, which practically kissed my bumper as soon as the other vehicles in our motorcade split. Coincidence? Not bloody likely.
With my speed pegged to the fifty-five-miles-per-hour limit, I ticked off my suspicious tail’s options. He could try to muscle me off the road and into the marsh where I’d be a mired duck. Or he could pull alongside and shoot.
Either way I needed to keep him behind me. Returning fire wasn’t an option. Hell, I couldn’t even reach the glove box to retrieve my gun—not if I wanted to keep the car under control.
Beyond the next curve, the snaking road briefly righted itself into a straightaway. Afraid the man might put on a burst of speed, pull parallel, and shoot, I straddled the centerline, leaving his giant boat of a vehicle no room to pass.
To my surprise, he didn’t speed up. Why? Memories of that Kentucky Fried Colonel message stiffened my resolve. If paranoia had gotten the better of me, no harm done. The fellow on my tail could just write me off as another crazy woman driver. If I was right, well, I had to protect my back.
The straightaway section ended. Rounding a bend, I spotted a black Firebird several hundred yards ahead. Slewed sideways, it blocked both lanes of traffic. It was the same car that zoomed away from the bridge like a scalded cat. A body sprawled on the pavement beside it.
Hell and damnation. Normally I’d play Good Samaritan and stop to help anyone lying face-down on concrete. But the off-kilter scene smelled of setup, a classic pincer movement to trap me. If I stopped, I’d be at their mercy.
I glimpsed Wilderness State Park’s homey welcome sign carved into a large wooden plank nailed to two sawed-off tree trunks. I waited as long as I could then stomped on the gas and swerved onto the entrance road. Groceries thudded in the trunk as I fishtailed on gravel. A stray thought wicked its way front and center. Donna would have a cow if she could see me mistreating her Lexus.
Another set of tires squealed, and all extraneous thoughts fled my brain. He’s right behind me. I sped toward the interior entry gate a football field ahead. The wooden traffic arm was hoisted in an open position. In season, a park employee always sits in the booth and collects admission fees. Today it was abandoned. Until the vacationing hordes descended for Easter, there wasn’t enough patronage to justify a gatekeeper’s salary.
Wilderness Park had been preserved in its natural state. One minute you were in civilization, the next, jungle. As I zoomed through the gate, towering oaks and battered palms crowded the sliver of blacktop. I felt hemmed in, claustrophobic. The State of South Carolina had adhered to a low-environmental impact policy. No wide, two-lane roads. Traffic was one-way, a single-lane asphalt ribbon wound through the wilderness until it exited back onto the highway. Swinging around and flying past Underling wasn’t an option. At least there’d be no danger of collision with an oncoming car while I played stock car driver.
As the SUV towered menacingly behind me, the forest canopy plunged me into early twilight. Temperatures dropped to the shiver point.
What could I do?
I had an annual state park pass and visited Wilderness often. I knew the park’s points of interest by heart. If my attackers kept in contact by cell phone, the Firebird was either right behind the SUV or—scary thought—coming in the exit to create a new roadblock. If that happened, I’d be squeezed between them.
Note to self: when—or if—you get out of this mess, buy a cell phone.
At the turn-off to the welcome center, I didn’t hesitate. Please, please, let a park ranger be on duty. Actually, any witness would do.
I swung onto a side spur and caught a glimpse of the welcome center and its front pond covered with duckweed. Tourists usually congregated on a footbridge over the pond, peering into the ghastly green scum in hopes of glimpsing an alligator. Today there was nary a loiterer. What is going on?
The parking lot had not yet come into view. I turned the corner, my speed too high for the twisting road. I caromed forward, roughly jostling bordering underbrush. The sharp fronds of scrub palms scraped the chassis. Brittle vegetation met metal with a sickening screech.
A heavy chain stretched across the parking lot entrance. Red lettering flashed an explanation: Closed for repairs. Reopening April 15.
Were folks inside working on repairs? Should I slam into the chain? That was likely to put my car out of commission. A gamble I couldn’t afford. The land was too swampy here to risk running to ground.
With my options shrinking, I circled back to the main road and sped toward the lighthouse. The jungle beyond it was dense. With a head start, I could disappear. The footing would be surer on higher ground.
Trying to think while maneuvering the serpentine roads had me panting. One way in one way out. Wasn’t that the motto for those old roach motel ads: They check in, but they don’t check out. Not a positive train of thought.
I glanced in my side mirror. Crapola. My racecar maneuvers had opened up a measly hundred-foot lead. To calm myself, I listed my advantages. A gun. Knowledge of park geography. Good conditioning. I could hide in the dense foliage before Underling had a clue. But I needed a few more seconds’ lead.
I prayed the black Firebird wouldn’t sneak in the exit and cut me off before I performed my vanishing act. My only question was where to jump ship—and how. Leaping from a moving car looks good in movies, but I couldn’t risk breaking an ankle. Or worse.
My best bet: stop in the middle of the road, just around a bend. Then dash into the jungle. With any luck, Underling would smash into the abandoned Lexus. A fatal crash would be peachy.
I reached the parking area used by tourists who visit the park’s lighthouse. As the white tower leapt into view, I noticed a lone car in the lot. The nearby picnic area and a boardwalk leading to the sandy beach were empty. No sign of life at the base of the lighthouse either. I’d have to follow through on my hide-in-the-jungle strategy.
I heard a loud pop and the car shimmied as if I’d run across a patch of ice. A blown rear tire. Impossible to make the next bend and my planned exit. What now?
I slammed on the brakes, and opened the glove compartment to grab my gun. Empty. My gun was gone. Damn.
A minute ago, I was scared. Now I was terrified. I practiced Tae Bo and knew some nifty little kicks and thrusts, but such antics were no match for a bullet.
I took off at a dead run. In a nod to visiting picnickers, rangers had cleared this section of subtropical underbrush. Cover was nonexistent. The trees left standing were mostly palms, too skinny to hide anyone with hips wider than Olive Oyl’s.
Weave. Don’t be predictable.
I glanced over my shoulder. Two men in pursuit. The driver of the black Firebird had joined forces with his buddy in the green SUV. Firebird’s angled trajectory cut me off from the beach.
Nowhere to go. Except the lighthouse. I conjured up old military training protocol. Seek high ground—easier to defend. Always leave a back door. Unfortunately, while the lighthouse offered high ground, it was also a trap. No back door.
Flouting tactical wisdom, I scrambled toward the lighthouse. The upside was a single entry. No surprise attack. Constructed of bricks covered with cast iron plates, the lighthouse was designed to be disassembled and moved whenever tides ate too greedily at
the eroding shoreline. If the gunmen could be kept outside, the armor would stop any bullet.
I had little hope of transforming the lighthouse into a personal fortress. The door could only be locked from the outside—a bulky padlock arrangement. Within a few feet of my goal, I noticed that a two-by-six wedged open the structure’s stout wooden door. This time spring-cleaning worked to my advantage. Yellow caution tape festooned the entry. A sign read: Caution Wet Paint. I hurtled through the tape like a mad marathoner using her last burst of energy to punch through the finish line.
Turning, I squandered a second on a visual check of Underling’s progress. I’d been right: the portly thug had been the SUV’s driver. His black shirt shimmered in the sun and his shoes gleamed with a spit-and-polish shine. He resembled a fat, glistening cockroach. One I had no way to squash. Though I couldn’t see his hands, I felt certain he was armed—gun, stunner or both. My back burned in recalled pain. The lighthouse blocked any view of Firebird.
I dashed inside and shivered in the dank base of the tower. Could I jam the door shut? I dismissed the possibility as soon as it crossed my mind. The door swung out. Forget it. Find a weapon.
The packed dirt floor was empty except for a few moldy bricks, crumbling mortar still attached. Better than nothing. I hefted one and balanced it on my shoulder. I considered picking up another, but I needed to keep a hand free for the railing.
Staring up at the spiral staircase, I swallowed hard. The stairs and rails were metal, the steps a see-through mesh. A friend in the construction trade had counted the steps—176—and tried to calculate the rise. How on earth had I remembered that?
I’d climbed to the top twice. What I remembered best about my last visit was my mistake: looking down as I began my descent, an excruciatingly slow and queasy one.
I’m not a total acrophobe. Whisk me to the top of a skyscraper in a glass-enclosed elevator, and I’ll marvel at the scenery. Take me up in an Army helicopter, and I’m okay. The need to upchuck isn’t triggered until I look down a shaft, or find myself perilously close to a ledge with nothing substantial between me and a yawning chasm.
Dear Killer (Marley Clark Mysteries) Page 16