by Rick Reed
“Come down here and help me!” Norman yelled. “And get the gloves out of that box there.” He pointed under Tom’s seat to a cardboard shoebox.
Gloves were found and both men began working the line out of the water. Soon they were sweating with the effort.
“It’s come loose, old man!” Tom said, feeling whatever was on the other end of the fishing line move slightly. They redoubled their efforts, pulling in several feet of line, and then it stopped. This time both men rained expletives down across the water.
Without letting go of the line, Norman said, “Get me the hook!”
The floor of the boat was littered with beer cans and fast food wrappers, but Tom found the broom handle the old man had rigged with a garden hook on one end. He worked it from under the bench seats and went back to help Norman.
“Water’s deep here, remember,” Tom cautioned.
“You swim, don’t you?”
“I never learned how,” Tom said.
“Well, it’s not that I don’t care, but I ain’t losing my hooks!” Norman yelled. “Now grab it!”
Tom crouched and reluctantly shoved the homemade contraption over the side with one hand, holding on with the other. When the boat canted, he almost fell into the water, and would have if Norman hadn’t grabbed his belt.
“Thanks, Norm.”
Tom got settled on his knees and tried again. His arm was submerged all the way up to his shoulder in smelly creek water. While Tom moved the hook around, Norman kept the fishing line taut. Whatever was down there was heavy.
Tom suddenly stopped.
“You got it hooked?” Norman asked.
Tom said, smiling, “I felt the hook bite into something.”
Jack stood, hands in his pockets, looking down the bank at what the two fishermen had pulled from the water. The body appeared to be that of a young woman, now lying gray-skinned and headless on the mud-crusted blue tarp that had been her burial shroud. Eric was with him when he had received the call and insisted on driving separately while Jack picked up his partner.
Eric Manson stood on the muddy creek bank nearby—his five-hundred-dollar Italian loafers ruined in the green mud—and watched the fire department’s water rescue diver slip back into the water. Responding police and fire department vehicles were parked a hundred yards from the creek, but any tracks near the creek bank had already been covered by dozens of others.
Jack and Liddell had interviewed the first arriving officers and were told the fishermen said they had “hooked” into “it” directly under the overpass. When they pulled “it” up to the side of the boat, they saw a blue tarp wrapped with chains. They were so shocked they almost turned the boat over. The old man had paddled to the creek bank while the young one held on to the gaff. They had both dragged it—and the concrete blocks that were tied to each end—out of the water. Then they called the police.
“Do you think it’s the dancer?” Eric asked as another diver splashed into the muddy creek water.
“Samantha Steele was five-two,” Liddell remarked. “The girl from Harrisburg was taller than that, wasn’t she?” He checked his notebook. “Hope Dupree was five-five.”
“It could be either of them. Or neither of them,” Jack said. It was difficult to accurately estimate a person’s height when the head was missing.
Eric remarked gloomily, “We have a serial killer on our hands.”
Walker came toward them, his boots making a sucking sound each time one would dislodge from the mud. “This one has a tattoo of a butterfly on her left ankle. I’ve got close-ups.”
“Can you send all these photos to Detective Jones in Harrisburg?” Jack asked.
“Will do,” Walker said.
Eric lifted one shoe out of the mud with a sucking sound. “No reason for me to stay here. I’ll call Trent.”
“Good thinking,” Jack said, glad to dismiss him. Had Eric just realized this was a serial murderer case?
He examined the body. No defensive wounds on the hands. Tattoos—ivy vines—climbed around the left arm from elbow to shoulder. A butterfly on her ankle stood out in the filmy mud on her skin. No other visible wounds or lacerations on the torso or extremities. So, maybe it wasn’t Hope Dupree. Most meth addicts lived a rough life. He would expect her body to be more emaciated, and somehow damaged. This body was not anorexic.
“Liddell, can you get someone to find the dancer’s boyfriend?”
“Way ahead of you, pod’na. He’s going to meet us at the morgue.”
“Where are the witnesses?” Jack asked one of the uniformed officers.
“Over there.” The officer pointed toward a skate park just east of their location. “And that,” he added, pointing to a bow sticking out of the head-high brush twenty feet away, “is their skiff. We checked. There’s nothing in it.”
“Let’s look anyway,” Jack said to his partner.
“That’s why we get the big bucks, pod’na.”
The skiff was made up of rotted planks that were sealed, here and there, with what looked like roofing tar and cut strips of rubber inner tube material. A cardboard shoebox was open on its side in the bottom of the boat. Fishing line, fishing hooks, red and white floats, and a pair of rusty pliers was strewn on the floor with dozens of empty beer cans. A mop or broom or rake handle had a large metal hook wired to one end, and the contraption lay on the ground by the skiff.
One of the rescue divers surfaced in the creek and shouted to get Jack’s attention. He raised two fingers and pointed into the water.
“Aww! What the . . . ?Oh shit!” Jack said.
Divers brought up two more blue tarp–wrapped bundles identical to the one the fishermen had snagged with a homemade gaff. Both were weighted with cinder blocks, and one was tied with the kind of chains used on a swing set. That one contained the body of an adult white male, fully clothed, covered in what could best be described as prison tats: one a dragon, another some kind of Celtic knots, others too faded from age to make out, and some scars that might have been old knife wounds. F-U-C-K Y-O-U was tattooed on the fingers, most likely not by his mother. The right nipple was missing, but it looked to be an old wound and had healed completely.
The other body was that of a young white female, early twenties or younger. Her legs looked strong and were absent of body art. She was unclad, except for a pair of skimpy panties. Her navel was pierced with a diamond stud. This is the dancer.
“I’ll call Jones and tell him to expect the photos,” Jack said.
Walker went to help his beleaguered techs. “I’m going to need more help. I’ve sent all the photos to Detective Jones.”
Jack’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered.
“The pictures just came through,” Jones said. “Keep this up and you’ll be even with me on murders.”
“Recognize anything from the pictures?” Jack asked.
“Yep. That’s Hope Dupree. I recognize the tats. She has a butterfly tattoo on the left ankle and an ivy vine on the upper left arm. We have medical records if you need them.”
Jack walked over to the corpse that was found by the fishermen. The body had a butterfly tattoo on the left ankle. “So you can make a tentative identification on the female?”
“Yeah. And I’m pretty sure the body of the male is Dick Longest. He always went for the biker look. He had been stabbed in the back and stomach in prison and had one of his tits cut off in a bar fight.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “We still have a jurisdiction problem.” Until they found the exact locations where the victims were killed, the jurisdiction usually went to the place where the body was found. The problem was, body parts were found in two jurisdictions. Heads in Harrisburg, bodies in Evansville. Jack doubted if Harrisburg’s chief of police wanted to add two more unsolved homicides to his record.
Jones said, “Hey, they’re all yours. And good riddance.”
“Will you have your chief call my chief to make it all legal?” Jack asked, not trusting Jones at his word. Afte
r all, the man was on EDP Narcotics and the Fed’s radar. Personally, he thought both were full of shit. Jones seemed like a solid cop. But still . . .
Jones chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll do that. And then we can do lunch.”
“Jack,” Walker said, walking up to the detectives. “I think we’ve identified the second female’s body.”
“That was quick,” Jack said. “Did you see it in your crystal ball?”
“Better than that. She has ‘Sammi loves Cliff’ tattooed on the back of her shoulder.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Moira came home from work, fixed a salad and a generous pour of Chablis, and took the meal to her room. It had been a long and strange day. She didn’t want to tell Katie that she was worried that maybe she’d gone into the wrong line of work.
When Eric asked her to get the search warrant for Alaina Kusta’s house, she’d jumped at the chance to become more involved. True, Eric hadn’t told her to bring the warrant in person, but she couldn’t resist the chance to see firsthand what they would do with it. She didn’t plan on being one of those prosecutors she always heard Jack complaining about: “They sit on their asses and never get their hands dirty.” But he didn’t seem to like it any better when she got off her ass.
When they let her go inside the victim’s house, the hairs initially stood up on her forearms. But in the end the walk-through had been anticlimatic, and truthfully, a little sad. Seeing how little Alaina Kusta had to show for fifty-three years on this earth scared her into wondering if, someday, that might be her life. A few diplomas on the wall, and ending a lonely solitary existence with no one to remember you or mourn your passing.
Watching Jack and Liddell process the scene was less dramatic than she had imagined. On television the detectives always find a clue that sheds light on the case. Her experience today was more like walking through a museum of a person’s uneventful past.
She pushed the remains of the salad around the plate, her appetite gone, and then made up her mind. She grabbed her car keys.
“Hi, Nova. Remember me?” Moira asked the Civic Center’s night man.
Nova looked like he was in his late sixties, but hands twisted into arthritic claws and the exaggerated stoop to his walk suggested he was much older. His thick gray hair was pulled into a ponytail. The faded gray shirt and pants and heavy gray beard gave him the appearance of a shadow in the doorway.
Rheumy eyes widened behind corrective lenses while he studied her face, and then recognition illuminated his eyes, lending truth to his name: Nova, which means “suddenly brightening star.”
“Moira. You’re Jack Murphy’s friend.”
“You have a great memory.”
“I’m old. Not stupid,” Nova said. “We’re closed, you know? Forget something, did you?”
“I need to get in my office, Nova. Jack said you would help me.”
At the mention of Murphy’s name the old man became cooperative. “Well, I guess it won’t do no harm.” He unlocked the door and pushed it just wide enough for her to step through.
“I got a master key,” Nova said. “Do you need your office unlocked, too?”
Moira held up her key, thanked him, and he shuffled off into the gloom. Once she reached her office, though, she found the door open and the lights on, revealing the stacks of boxes. She was glad to see that at least someone had the forethought to bring empty bankers boxes while she was gone.
Stacks of heavy-looking boxes leaned against the walls. She closed her door and hoisted the nearest box with great effort. It was heavier than she had imagined and slipped from her grasp and hit the floor. The box split down the sides, and spilled files and loose documents across the floor and under the desk.
“Just great!” she said, dropping to her hands and knees to crawl under the desk. She was reaching for the files when she noticed a small square of plastic taped to the underside of the desktop. She pulled it free, and leaving the splayed folders, squirmed backward until she could stand.
She peeled the cellophane tape from the item and felt a thrill of excitement at what she had found. In her palm was a computer flash drive.
She eyed the mess of files that still lay scattered on the floor. She would leave it until tomorrow. But what about the flash drive? she thought, gripping it tightly. She was dying of curiosity. What did it have on it? Should she take a look? Should she share her discovery with Trent—or Eric now? At this hour? Both men had made her promise that if she found anything that she would come to them right away. She was a new employee, and disobeying her supervisors was grounds for dismissal. In any case she couldn’t leave it in the office. Too many people—even Nova—had keys to her office.
She made up her mind to give it to Eric in the morning. Hurrying slightly, so she could go home to see what was on the flash drive, she turned her lights off and stepped into the hallway. She was pulling the door shut when someone grabbed her from behind.
Moira screamed and twisted her arm away. She continued screaming as she ran down the hallway.
“Moira! It’s me!” came a familiar voice.
Heart pounding, Moira stopped to see Eric Manson standing beside her office. The folders he’d been carrying were scattered across the floor.
“You scared me to death!” Moira said, walking back. “I’m sorry, Eric, but you startled me.” She held up her hands and showed him that they were shaking.
“What are you doing here?” Eric asked.
“Why are you still here?”
“I had to pick something up and I heard noise coming from your office.” He pointed to her closed hand. “What have you got there?”
Maybe it was the angry look on his face, or maybe she just didn’t like the tone of his voice, but she lied. “It’s mine, Eric,” she said matter-of-factly, and pocketed the device.
Eric stepped in close. “Did Jack send you to snoop around?”
She felt her face burn as shock of being grabbed from behind was replaced by anger at his insinuation.
She had never seen him angry and it wasn’t a good look on him. His mouth was set in a grim line. Redness crept into his clamped jaws, and his hands were crushed into fists.
“I don’t snoop, Eric,” she said, icily, refusing to back down from his angry stare. “I was working. And on my own time, I might add.”
“Working on what?” he demanded to know. “You haven’t been assigned any cases yet.”
His caustic words stung her. Until now she had only heard what a valued employee she was. How they were a family.
In that moment she decided to give the flash drive to Jack. It would serve Eric right. And, besides, if she gave up the flash drive now, it would only prove to Eric that she had been snooping—and she had found it by accident.
“I was working on those boxes of files,” she said, and that much was true. “I thought you would appreciate my hard work.”
His expression softened. He pushed her door open and saw the floor was littered with files. A broken box lay nearby. Suddenly he became the old Eric, the one engaged to her sister.
“Sorry, Moira. I guess we scared each other,” he said, giving her a sheepish grin. “Did you find anything?”
“Uh, no,” she lied.
He glanced at the pocket where she had put the flash drive, but then put a hand on her shoulder, saying, “Let me walk you out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Jack sped west on Diamond Avenue, turned north onto Heidel-bach, and floored it.
“Want me to drive?” Liddell asked.
Captain Franklin’s call had put Jack in a dark mood.
“Moira is Eric’s employee,” Jack said, barely slowing for a stop sign at Louisiana Street. “I didn’t send her to snoop around their offices. Why would Eric think that? What’s he got to hide? And why would he call Franklin and ask if I sent her?”
“Get it out. That’s good. Let’s talk about it, pod’na.”
Jack gripped the wheel tighter and the Crown Vic’s tires squealed around
the corner onto Maryland Street.
“C’mon, Jack. She was just doing what you would have done,” Liddell said. “You have to give her some credit.”
“She’s in a dead woman’s office at night! By herself! Snooping around!” Anger tinged Jack’s every word.
Liddell punched Jack on the arm. “So, who’s that remind you of?”
“Shut up,” Jack said. But he knew Liddell was right. She was just doing what he would have done, given the circumstances. He should have seen it coming.
“So, your plan is to go over there and yell at her. Am I right?” Liddell asked.
“I’m not going to yell at her.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Jack slowed down and pulled to the curb. “I’m going to reason with her,” he clarified.
“Uh-huh. Good luck with that.”
Jack was in no mood for smart aleck remarks. “Okay, Bigfoot. What would you do if Marcie got involved in one of your cases?”
Without hesitation Liddell said, “I’d yell at her.”
Jack huffed in victory, but Liddell added, “Course, she’s not a deputy prosecutor whose job it is to ensure cases are thoroughly investigated and tried in a court of law.”
Jack ran his hands through his hair in a new burst of frustration. “You want to drive?”
“Nah. You’re doing great. Let’s go to Donut Bank. Tell you what, you can yell at me if it makes you feel better.” Liddell leaned back in the seat.
Jack was about to pull away from the curb when his phone rang.
Moira said, “Jack. You’ve got to come over right away!”
“You want me to come in with you?” Liddell asked. “Or would you like to be alone?” he said with a big grin.
“Moira said she has something to show us,” Jack said. “I might need you to stop me from yelling.”
As they walked onto the porch, the door opened. A soft light framed Katie as she stood in the doorway. Jack had a pleasant flash of memory. Back when they were first married, Katie would be waiting for him when he came home. She would greet him at the door in just the same manner. Less clothes, maybe.