Caribbean Moon (A Manny Williams Thriller, Book One)

by Murcer, Rick

  This would be her last chance. The doctors said four to six months was all she had left, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. It didn’t seem right, but thinking about it only made things worse, and she had promised herself that she wouldn’t dwell on her remaining time. But it was hard, so hard, and this life had been short. There were . . . regrets.

  She snorted. People were just flat out lying when they said they had no regrets. Bullshit. No one’s closet was empty. No one lived a life void of mistakes.

  Waving her hands in rebellion, she chased away the last of her austere reflections.

  The next day was all that mattered. Her boy would come. She smiled. God had answered her prayer. She was sure of it, and his visit was all she had.

  That and a mother’s secrets.

  CHAPTER-41

  The gruesome, crime-scene photos were disturbing, each one emitting an intonation of pure evil. Hell, even “evil” would have to skip up a notch to match this.

  Manny wondered if Peppercorn could really do this. The man had a hard time getting from A to B, and murder was a giant step from rape.

  The pictures escalated the pain he felt for the unfortunate victims and their stunned families. His heart broke for the dead, but equally as much for their broken loved ones. For a while, if not forever, their lives would cease meaning, rhyme, or reason. They would lay awake trying to control the senselessness of it all. Frustration would be their closest friend and “why” the only question that mattered. He knew; he’d been there.

  His hand quivered ever so slightly as he studied the photos. No one deserved to die like this. But it did the investigation absolutely no favors if he approached his role without checking his emotion.

  He had run into his fair share of psychotic horrors over the years, but this unrestrained creep show took the cake, won the grand prize.

  After going through the pictures once, he flipped the file back to the beginning. The first time through was to see if he could collect a better feel for the perp’s mind. Just maybe he could develop some ideas that could help catch him before he killed again—and he felt sure this lion would feed again.

  Sophie and Detective Perez had left to work their assignment, including Manny’s request for a list of people who had purchased excursion tickets to Trunk Bay. The detectives were also going to snoop around the security checkpoints near the boarding ramps and see if anyone could remember someone who matched Manny’s description of the man he had seen approaching Mike and Lexy and again in the casino.

  The killer’s motive hadn’t become totally clear, but it seemed logical to assume he wanted to be noticed, to start some cat-and-mouse game. That was evident by his display of Liz’s body. Narcissism was a common thread for psychopaths. They wanted to be noticed, appreciated. It fit.

  And if it was the same man Manny saw with Mike and Lexy, and if that man had really wanted to hurt them, why hadn’t he?

  Manny had another, less overt reason for his request of the two women detectives—he wanted more time alone with the files. No distractions. No questions. Just him and the evidence.

  Sophie had become more than familiar with the game, and he knew he hadn’t fooled her. In fact, he was beginning to realize just how hard it was to fool her. But she was willing to go along with him and see if any of the legwork led to a lead. If there was something, she would find it.

  Louise and Barb left his cabin to swing by Gavin and Stella’s suite. The three women were going to lay out on the Sun Deck and work on their tans. Translated, they were going to get out of their law enforcement husbands’ collective ways. They all knew the drill. Except this time it was on a cruise ship deep in the beautiful Caribbean. At least the women had that going for them.

  Manny stood and stretched, cracking his shoulder in the process. He grimaced. Old football injuries only got . . . older.

  His nose suddenly honed in on what he had ignored for the last fifteen minutes. Room service had brought the two Rueben sandwiches Manny had ordered from the New York deli, and the inviting scent of corned beef, Thousand Island dressing, and sauerkraut harassed his groaning stomach. He had been concentrating on the file and had forgotten about the manna from heaven. He grabbed the sandwiches and walked out to the balcony.

  The band was getting cranked up on the Lido Deck. He had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed steel drum music. “Hot, Hot, Hot” was one of the best island songs ever written.

  Liz would’ve loved this. He could see her swaying to the bold sound of the band. Truth is she would never love anything again. Not on this earth, at least. There was something more than unfair about that. He suddenly wasn’t hungry.

  The air-conditioned cabin felt good as he came in from the heat and sat down. It was time for round two. He flipped open the FBI file and began to finger the appalling pictures and neatly typed reports a second time—much slower, studying each page with a renewed, deliberate purpose.

  Every piece of evidence at each scene was marked and numbered with a yellow tab so it could be cataloged sequentially. It was that way for the Henkle and Maxwell murders, but not for where Liz’s body was found.

  Alex and Agent Tucker would handle the Casnovsky’s room with great expertise, but lifeboat sixteen had been so compromised it may never give them anything to work with. Richardson and his staff, so far, had been a bad joke. They had even screwed up printing the photos of Liz’s body, and he would have to wait for Tucker’s report to see them. The paperwork was fairly detailed, but that was it for Liz’s file.

  Part of Manny was relieved. Seeing her that way once was bad enough, and he could wait to revisit that lair. Besides, he didn’t think there would be much variance between the three murders. This killer was just too organized.

  He continued working his way through the set of crime-scene photos. Each woman was viciously strangled with bare hands, just as Agent Corner had observed. The size of the deep, violent bruises around each of the murdered women’s necks confirmed it. Tucker had been right on that too. He scrutinized the blurred bruising. The intense bite marks made the purple, horizontal striations harder to see, but they were there. It looked like four marks on one side of the throat and one on the other. He grabbed similar photos from Dot and Juanita and put them side by side. Although the quality of all the pictures wasn’t identical, the markings on each woman’s throat were generally the same. A thought struck him like a stinging slap on a cold winter’s morning.

  These women were killed with one hand.

  It would take a hell of a grip to kill an adult female with one hand. If his suspicions were true, then what was the killer doing with his other hand? Masturbating? Something else?

  The strangulations of the women were part of the ritual, his ritual. An element of the process? The killer put the women under, and then took his sweet time to finish what he started. He had undressed them and neatly stacked their clothes. What was significant about that? Neat freak? His notion of gentlemanly behavior? He couldn’t have raped them right away. It would have taken a few minutes to undress them and fold the clothes. Did it take him awhile to awaken the one-eyed snake? Foreplay? He didn’t know for sure, but he reasoned he was close.

  The killer’s biting of his victims was savage and wild. Anger? Frustration? Power? Hatred? What made this asshole tick? And why biting?

  It was becoming more difficult to leave Peppercorn out of the equation.

  Agent Tucker had said he thought the victims could have been unconscious when they were killed, at least for much of the attack. That maybe because this predator wanted peace and quiet. No resistance. But if that were true, why would he clip the fingernails of the victims? Did they wake up?

  Manny continued to leaf through the files and reread the reports, taking note of the carefully placed position of the bodies. The tilt of each victim’s head. It was as if each woman were staring into the eyes of their killer. As if he wanted them to look at him. Lover’s eyes?

  The truth struck him like those sudden revelations do
. The killer needed them to wake up. He drugged them just enough so the sick son of a bitch could prepare for the final step.

  My God!

  When the victims had come to, he’d murdered them slowly with purpose. The killer had wanted to watch them die.

  CHAPTER-42

  The shade provided by the steel overhang running the circumference of the Sun Deck sheltered the killer like an iguana lounging under a palm. The glass of red rum punch felt cold in his hand as he crossed his long legs, watching the flurry of activity in the deck’s pool area. Preteen children and drunken adults splashed around in the briny, pristine water with no conscious perception of who should be acting older—and not really caring.

  They are all idiots. Pimples on society’s ass. Pigs wallowing in the trough.

  He hated them and despised their superficial pretense. They masqueraded at enjoying each other, but in the end, they really only cared about their own self-indulgent desires. At least he was honest. He knew what he was about and embraced it.

  The Ocean Duchess was scheduled to leave Dominica in a few hours. That was good. The day’s work had been completed. A satisfied smile ranged across his face.

  Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

  The killer’s mind blazed with thoughts of the next step. It was perfect. Just like him. Today’s agenda was a critical cog, no doubt, but reaching Aruba would be the culmination of his hard work.

  He wondered if this was how all of the great composers and painters felt when they had finished the one creation they knew would capture the world’s imagination. He was the Rembrandt of death, the Monet of pain. He laughed out loud.

  Damn, he loved being in control. This was the most exhilarating game he had ever played. Nothing had ever come close to this, not even at the prison. No one would see the purpose of his plan, with the possible exception of Detective Williams, who was smarter than he remembered. But then again, he needed the detective to be.

  The band started again, and the music quivered with a life of its own. The killer tapped his foot to the performer’s version of “Hot, Hot, Hot.”

  “Not great, but it works. I give it a seven.”

  Slowly, he began to scan the deck. Back and forth. His head moved like a great white shark, seeking its prey, injured and near.

  She would make her long-awaited entrance soon. He knew her patterns already, and the next shining star of this production was like a dog salivating at the ring of a bell. He marveled at how people inadvertently trained themselves. Their subconscious responses to a particular set of circumstances never wavered. It happened every time. Freud may have been on to something, for an anal moron.

  A blond bombshell in a red, thong bikini, large breasts swaying, gave him a double take, but he wasn’t interested. Another time perhaps. He had only one goal, and she wasn’t it.

  Finally, he saw who he wanted to see.

  Standing in the sunlight on the opposite side of the kiddy pool was the leading lady of his next big show. He knitted his brow. There was one small detail, a tiny distraction that needed to be attended to by dinner, before the headline show went on, but he would handle that. Distractions were to be expected. The unsuspecting young woman spoke to her friends with excited animation. She laughed without a care in world. She had no inkling of what was in store for her. No idea of how the last few hours of her life would play out, how things would change.

  He watched her with the group, stored the picture of her appealing body in his mind. Intense heat began to spread to his groin. He could hear his heart thumping in his chest as his unchecked imagination climbed to new heights.

  His mark’s skimpy two-piece exposed her for the slut she was. Still, she was attractive, and tonight’s task wouldn’t be too daunting—for him. He would enjoy this phase of his homework. Just like he had enjoyed them all.

  Draining his drink, he rose from the deck chair and strolled directly toward the unsuspecting source of his attention, each step bringing him closer to her and the evening’s festivities.

  The distinct fragrance of her coconut-butter sun lotion rose to his nostrils as he moved closer.

  “Excuse me,” he smoothed as he brushed against her. This was so intense.

  The Lansing woman with the piercing eyes and wide, white smile responded. “Sorry. I guess I should get out of the aisle.”

  “No problem, no problem at all. We’re all enjoying the time of our lives,” he answered, then strolled away whistling “Hot, Hot, Hot.”

  CHAPTER-43

  Sophie stood motionless in front of lifeboat sixteen. She wasn’t sure what she had expected in coming here. Anything comforting, she supposed, would be welcome. Hell, maybe the boat would talk to her.

  The afternoon sun beat on the back of her neck like a blast furnace, but she didn’t care. The sullen numbness she felt couldn’t be dispatched, not completely anyway. Nor could the heinous one-two punch of guilt and denial.

  Why am I here?

  Clues? A glimpse of the killer . . . because they always seemed to return to the scene . . . which she knew was almost never true. Something the CSU had missed? That was what she told Christina Perez. But that wasn’t really the truth, was it?

  First, her friend Liz, and now her freshly crowned ex-lover, were dead. Never mind he just happened to be Liz’s husband. She shifted her feet and bowed her head as she blushed a convicting scarlet.

  Liz had been her friend and even a confidant, the way women can be to others in their profession. The DA had helped her get through some rough times during her divorce, and Sophie had repaid this kindness by bopping Liz’s husband.

  Her head dropped even lower. “Some friend,” she whispered.

  Sophie had put herself in the middle of one of those ill-advised love triangles always written about in romance novels. She would never have thought that could have happened to her. But it had. She felt dirty. The kind of hell-born dirt that bad girls never remembered and good girls never forgot.

  She looked intently at the place where Liz’s bloodied arm had dangled the night before. The blood had been cleaned away, but the stain would never leave the deck of her guilt-ridden heart.

  “Liz. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I can’t tell you why I was sleeping with your husband. It just . . . happened,” she confessed. “If you can hear me and can find it in your heart, I’m begging your forgiveness.”

  Just then, as if by some divine cue, a warm ocean breeze blew her long hair from her face. The wind danced and circled her moist eyes, as if to dry her repentant tears. The gentle wind was like a baby’s breath, and her eyelids fluttered shut. She let herself become lost in the moment.

  Sophie didn’t believe in omens, but she had seen a prayer answered a time or two, and confession always seemed to be good for the soul.

  In the interrogation rooms, she had witnessed hardened killers bawl with unadulterated relief after admitting their crimes, hoping against hope their confession could erase their treachery.

  She wasn’t sure if the breeze had been heaven sent, or if it had even been real, but she suddenly felt better.

  Perhaps her solitary confession had been good for her spirit.

  Was there really a God who forgives and brings about a peace that surpasses all understanding? At that moment, she believed there was.

  “I’ll do all I can to find your killer. I owe you that. And Liz, thanks,” she breathed softly.

  Turning to leave, she noticed a small piece of blue-and-white paper, resembling a torn movie pass, resting underneath the white crank handle that controlled the raising and lowering of the lifeboat. She glanced around the deck and was still alone. She was sure it hadn’t been there a minute ago, but in her current state . . .

  She squinted, stretching her arm to pick it up, halting in mid-motion.

  It was a used excursion ticket for Trunk Bay, calling her like early-morning coffee. Her heart thudded in her ears as she gawked at the clean imprint in the middle of the pass.

/>   There was nothing latent about the flirtatious fingerprint winking at her from the surface of the stub.

  CHAPTER-44

  Eli Jenkins glanced down the hallway of Deck Six’s starboard side and watched the blue-haired couple squeeze through their cabin door, giggling like young lovers. The rest of the hallway was clear.

  Damn, how I hate having to be cautious.

  But soon all caution would be as unnecessary as a fur coat in Aruba. Every spinning molecule of his body brayed with enthusiastic prospect. This was what he was born for. He was here to set things in order. This was just another predestined step structured by destiny itself. He felt invincible.

  A few seconds later, he raised a huge paw and rapped on the steel door with authority.

  I wonder if she likes surprises.

  The cabin door swung open and, dressed in a Carousel embroidered pink tank top and hiking shorts, her shining black hair tied in a neat ponytail, stood Detective Christina Perez.

  Her eyes became slits when she scoped the tall man dressed in the room steward’s uniform. After a few seconds, her right hand pulled reluctantly away from her back. Jenkins knew she was ready to pull the .38 Smith and Wesson revolver, her back-up weapon. The one she hadn’t turned in when she boarded. He had counted on her having the gun, and she didn’t disappoint.

  All cops were the same. They lived lives as borderline criminals who didn’t think rules applied to them. Perez was a bit jumpy. Good. That meant that she and paranoia were dining at the same table.

  “Yes?”

  “Here are the extra bath towels you requested. My supervisor said to bring you these right away,” he spoke in his best Middle Eastern accent.

  Perez looked at him and smiled. “No. I didn’t request any more towels. But thank you anyway.”

  She was more of a looker than he thought. Nice legs too. Then again, he had only seen her from a distance, until now. They were about to get closer than she ever bargained for.