Water's Edge: A totally gripping crime thriller (Detective Megan Carpenter Book 2)

by Gregg Olsen

  “Detective Carpenter?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m the one you’re supposed to meet,” she says. “Come with me.”

  I exit the Taurus and meet her on the sidewalk. I was wrong in my assessment of her age. She is easily in her late forties. Tall, thin, athletic looking, with short-cropped black hair, no makeup, dark blue uniform, and three silver stars on each collar. Fine lines around her eyes indicate a tanning bed or years of hard living.

  Not sure which.

  “Chief Holmes,” she says, not offering a hand. “Jimmy said you wanted to see Robert Boyd’s quarters.”

  Quarters. Not room or dorm room. She’s ex-military.

  “Ex-Army?” I guess.

  “Navy,” she says with a hint of a smile. “Chief petty officer. Submarine duty.” She walks away. I suppose I should follow.

  “I appreciate this.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Jimmy.” Her pace is much quicker than mine and I have to jog to keep up. I don’t like to jog unless I’m chasing someone or running away. She notices and slows.

  “Sorry. Old habits.”

  “Not a problem,” I say. “Did you know Boyd?”

  “I didn’t know him, but I was keeping an eye on his activities on campus.”

  I wait for her to expand on what she meant.

  “He was a source for fake IDs. He was a source for illegal drugs. He shared a room with another student. Neither of them ever made it to any classes, but they seemed to keep their grades up. I suspect someone was taking exams for them. Or they were hacking the school computer system, entering grades.”

  I knew how to do that. In fact, I’ve done it. It isn’t difficult if you have one of the employees’ passwords.

  “Who was his roommate?” I ask.

  “Qassim Hadir,” she says. “Came here from Syria. Jimmy told me he has a Washington driver’s license in the name of Robert Aloysius Boyd. I’m not sure which of these two made the IDs.”

  Clay told me that Robbie Boyd had stolen the identity of his roommate, who was a black male. Now Chief Holmes tells me the other guy’s name is Qassim Hadir. I guess he could pass for a black male.

  “How do you know Qassim Hadir is his real name?”

  She shakes her head. “That’s the thing: I don’t. Both of these guys check out if you don’t look further than their applications to school. None of the jobs check out. None of the references check out. I had a friend run Boyd through Social Security with the number he’d provided. That Robert Boyd died nine years ago at the age of sixteen. Using a dead guy’s information—can you believe that?”

  I can.

  And, yes, I’d have done the same thing, but for a different reason. Survival. And who’s to say that’s not what these two were up to. One of them was dead. Hanged. Maybe set up for several murders. The other was missing if Jimmy could be believed. It was ironic. Or was it? What if the killer used Boyd to send us in a different direction? Boyd and Qassim could change identities like some people change underwear. Boyd could have just disappeared too. Like Qassim.

  But he didn’t.

  I had the feeling someone else was pulling the strings on these two.

  “I can believe anything,” I say.

  The two-story apartment building has five units up, five down. It’s wood framed with paint that’s a faded and chipped battleship gray. Black iron railings and concrete stairs complete the picture.

  From the outside, I check out Boyd’s room upstairs. Cheap white plastic chairs are on each level, facing out toward the bay. One of the balconies, Boyd’s I think, has a large wooden spool for a plant table. On top, an ashtray and a trio of empty beer cans.

  Chief Holmes uses a master key to unlock the door. I make a mental note to collect the beer cans if I don’t find anything more useful inside. I already had Boyd’s body, hence his DNA, but if someone hired him, it’s possible the real killer left something behind.

  The chief swings opens the door and the smell hits us. Hard. Like a semitruck of stench.

  Forty-Two

  The Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office is out in force. Clay is there, wearing his stern, all-business face, along with two other detectives going door-to-door, talking to any dorm resident who might be home.

  Not many are.

  Most everyone is at some kind of protest on the other side of campus where bulldozers are threatening a tiny grove of trees. A serial killer is on the loose, but they wouldn’t know that or even care if it didn’t interrupt a good party or a protest.

  “Did you have a warrant to enter?” Clay asks me.

  Chief Holmes saves me an explanation.

  “She came to check on the welfare of Boyd’s roommate. I knocked and didn’t get an answer. I smelled something disturbing and opened the door with my master key. I knew the smell immediately and entered to ensure there wasn’t someone else inside injured.”

  Clay rubs the back of his neck and grins.

  “Textbook explanation, Chief.”

  He looks at me. “Is that your story as well?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I also entered. We touched nothing and came right back out and called you.”

  That part wasn’t true, but the chief didn’t even flinch. I was starting to like the Navy way—or at least her version of it.

  Chief Holmes speaks up. “The name the guy gave when he became a student was Qassim Hadir.” She fills him in on how the Social Security number came back to a guy dead for nine years.

  “I’ll run his fingerprints through AFIS and locally,” Clay says. “You should have fingerprints from the body this morning. If you run those, can you let me know if you get a hit? I’ll do the same.”

  I nod.

  “Well, looks like you don’t need me or my people here any longer,” Chief Holmes says. “We’ll get back to policing the campus. Keep me in the loop on this one, Clay.”

  It wasn’t a request. Someone had been killed on her campus.

  “Looked like his neck was broken,” she says.

  He nods.

  Chief Holmes gets on her radio and tells her people to go back to their jobs. I catch up with her as she leaves the front walk of the apartments.

  “I appreciate what you did back there.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I want to catch this guy.”

  “I know you do. Good luck. He’d better not come back on my campus.”

  I return to the apartment, small space with a combination living room and kitchen. The living room couch has been made into a pull-out bed. It looks like it hasn’t been slept in and is cluttered with dirty clothes, magazines, and snack wrappers. I get on the floor and look under the couch, in the kitchen cabinets, in the oven, in the refrigerator. Adhering to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet is a poster. It’s a crude drawing of a pig. The eyes are crosses and the tongue is hanging out. Next to the pig is an even cruder drawing of a handgun with flames coming from the barrel. Under the drawing, someone has written in rough letters, “SORRY PIG.” I fold this up and stick it under my blazer in my waistband. The residents of the unit weren’t very literate and there is nothing else around that I can compare with the note found in Boyd’s hand.

  I study the body lying on its stomach on the bedroom floor. It’s a black male, twenties, short, chubby, long arms. Three things strike me. One, he has tattoos on the backs of both hands. Each tat is of an eyeball. Two, his head is almost turned around facing me. Three, he has been posed in the same manner as Karynn Eades.

  Vitruvian Man.

  Nothing is out of place. The apartment is a mess but not any more than you would expect with two younger men living there. I hear a siren. I go outside to wait with the chief. I don’t need photos of what I saw inside.

  I have it all stored in my head.

  Chief Holmes returns and I ask her to dig up any records she can find on Boyd and the dead guy. She promises I’ll have them before the end of the day.

  A beat later a uniformed Ki
tsap County deputy climbs up the stairs with Detective Clay Osborne.

  Now Clay is inside the apartment while I sit on the top step, waiting. Trying to stay out of the way of the crime scene techs.

  “What a mess,” he says.

  Clay has come up silently behind me. I hate that.

  “At least we found both of the Boyds,” I say.

  “What do you think is going on, Megan?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  “Me neither.”

  It was a stalemate.

  “You first,” I say. “Anything you say can’t and won’t be held against you in a poll of public opinion.”

  Clay grins. “Okay. I’ll go first. Here’s what it looks like. The key words here are ‘looks like.’ An alleged fourth victim of the killer is found on the rocks on Skunk Island. She’s got a broken neck and is laid out in a cross, like this guy in here. Not far away the Robbie Boyd you were looking for is found hanging in a tree. He has a piece of cloth in his hand with ‘Sorry Megan’ or something like that written on it. Some clothes and a purse are found nearby with the victim’s driver’s license.”

  I remain quiet and don’t give anything away as his eyes search mine.

  “So it looks like the white Boyd broke the black Boyd’s neck and posed him on the floor. He then took the latest victim, Karynn, to Skunk Island. Her neck may have been broken before she was taken there. White Boyd feels like the jig is up and decides to off himself. He writes you a confession note, throws a rope over a limb, and hangs himself.”

  Hearing Clay say it out loud convinces me the killer had set this all up. Four women sexually assaulted, murdered, dumped. And now two guys, criminals, die to clean up after him.

  I have another question. But I hold my tongue. How did Boyd get Karynn’s body to Skunk Island? We’ve never found Boyd’s junk car. There is no way to get to Skunk Island except by boat. There was no boat found abandoned on the island.

  “That’s it?” Clay asks.

  “I guess so.”

  “You’re going to keep digging, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He looks at his feet. “Who’s going to tell Larry Gray about all this?”

  I meant to call Larry. I forgot.

  “He’s your friend and you already have a working relationship,” I say.

  Clay pushes back. “He’s related to your boss.”

  Another stalemate. Clay just doesn’t want to listen to Larry whine about how he wasn’t brought in on finding Boyd’s body. He’ll want to wrap his case up and get back to important things like eating or making sexist remarks. He is a stark contrast to Sheriff Gray, his second cousin twice removed on his mother’s side. Whatever. I told the sheriff about Larry being one of the detectives on the cases and he just frowned.

  “I’ll call Larry,” I finally say. “I was going to anyway, but this came up.”

  Clay goes back inside the apartment and I return to my car. It’s still where I parked it. No parking ticket. I get in and start driving back to Port Hadlock and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. A lot of things are running around in my skull, always ending with How did Clay hear about Boyd’s body being found?

  Probable answer: the police grapevine.

  A cop talked to a dispatcher and that information was passed on to NASA and broadcast from a satellite. Another possibility: there is a collective intelligence, like an ant colony.

  I have an ulterior motive for contacting Larry. The DNA of my initial suspects, Jim Truitt and Steve Bohleber, didn’t match anything including the unknown matched samples collected from Dina Knowles and Leann Truitt. Margie Benton’s DNA sample was contaminated and couldn’t be matched to anything. None of the DNA was in the database kept by the FBI.

  I have four female victims and DNA has been collected from all four. This person has killed at least four people—maybe more if the Boyds are victims. A killer that prolific should have a record of some kind. Yet there is nothing in the DNA database. So, whose DNA wouldn’t be in the FBI’s database, which is the most comprehensive on the planet? There are a couple of possibilities. People who never committed a felony offense. People who are exempt, like government workers, politicians, law enforcement…

  I feel a chill. Shades of Alex Rader cross my mind. He was a cop. He was a kidnapper. A torturer. A murderer. And, of course, he’s dead. Yet, even when he was alive, his DNA would not have been in the FBI database.

  Forty-Three

  I get the coroner’s phone number for Kitsap County. Dr. Wilson has come to the campus dorm and had the body taken to the morgue in Bremerton, where he will perform the autopsy. He promised to call me with the results. I decide not to bother driving back to the Sheriff’s Office in Port Hadlock. The sheriff and Ronnie would already be gone by the time I arrived.

  As I drive home, I call our own pathologist, Dr. Andrade. His assistant answers. They received the two bodies from Skunk Island, but the doctor hasn’t given her a time for the autopsies. She asks me not to bring them more work. Very funny. She advises me that she will contact me when a time and date has been set. I remind her this is now a serial killer investigation and ask that she please pass that on to Dr. Andrade. Time is important. The call goes dead in my hand. I call her back. When she answers, I tell her to call Dr. Andrade and have him call me or I will find the doctor and make him available. I tell her it’s not up to her to screen emergency calls and then I hang up on her.

  That felt good.

  I park in front of my house. It isn’t really mine, but I’ve come to think of it that way. I’ve been here longer than I’ve lived anywhere. That’s the opposite of my life growing up. We never stayed in one place very long. My mom would have me or Hayden pick a city name out of a bowl at random and that was where we would move to next. Randomness would make us safe. If we didn’t know where we were going, no one else would, either.

  Even with the threatening emails from “Wallace,” I see no reason to move. This is home. Let him come. Yes, I’m afraid. Sometimes fear makes you brave.

  I put my purse and keys on the table, go to the bedroom, and flop across the mattress. My brain is tired. I can’t keep all of this straight. I get up, find a notepad and a pencil, and begin a chart. Victims, witnesses, evidence, counties involved, hospitals, DNA, locations the bodies were dumped, places of employment, where they resided, what they drove, and on and on.

  I tear that sheet off and try again.

  The locations of the dump sites are similar in that they are all near the water. The victims also lived near the water. The women worked in bars. Two of the women had given children up for adoption and one was pregnant. Did this have to do with the children? What were the odds that all of them would have had babies? The only one who doesn’t fit the profile is Karynn Eades, but I haven’t run down much information yet. I was sure that Boyd’s roommate would be my best lead. I was fairly sure Boyd wasn’t the killer. I feel he was involved somehow. Now Boyd’s roomie is dead. Murdered. His neck was broken just like Karynn Eades and the other victims.

  I need more. Marley can get the DNA done in a few hours, but he needs the samples to run and I need to convince him to do it. I pick the phone up to call Dr. Andrade and see it’s late. He hasn’t returned my call. I call Dispatch, get his home phone number, and call it. A woman answers.

  “Is this Mrs. Andrade?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Who’s calling?”

  “Megan Carpenter, Mrs. Andrade. I’m a detective with Jefferson County.”

  “Oh, that Megan?”

  “I guess so, Mrs. Andrade. Is your husband there?”

  “Detective, he is having his dinner. Late as usual. Can you call him at work tomorrow?”

  I hear a gruff voice in the background and then Dr. Andrade is on the phone.

  “Megan, I was going to call you, but I heard you were over in Kitsap finding more dead bodies. You’re like the angel of death.”

  �
��I was trying to find a witness and—”

  “You want to know if I sent the Eades rape kit to the crime lab. The answer is yes. I knew you’d want it rushed through. I also had buccal swabbings done on the male, Boyd. All of that is with the lab. Good luck.”

  He hangs up.

  I’m putting the phone down when it rings in my hand.

  “I thought you’d want to know that I’ll do the autopsies in the morning,” he says. “Eight o’clock.”

  “I’m sorry for calling you at home—”

  The line goes dead again.

  I have what I want. I don’t really need to attend the autopsies to know what he’ll find. I just needed the samples sent to the lab. Now I have to get Marley to work his magic again. If the DNA from Boyd matches Leann’s and Dina’s unknown sperm donor, I will have my killer. If it doesn’t, I have proof the killer is still out there.

  I make another call.

  “Ronnie Marsh,” she answers. She sounds distracted. I hope she’s not on a date, because I need her to do something.

  “Are you busy?” I ask.

  “I’m going over the records from that thumb drive you gave me.”

  “You’re still at work?” I look at the time.

  “I think I found something. Leann Truitt and Dina Knowles both had their babies at Kitsap Medical Center, but there isn’t a father’s name on the birth certificates. The babies were put up for adoption. I don’t have any way of getting the name of the couples that adopted the babies. The delivery doctors were different for them both. But guess what?”

  I wish she wouldn’t do that.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I found the dates they delivered and checked that with the video surveillance tapes. I’ve been going through them but there are several cameras and I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

  I’d forgotten to ask which camera went with which floor or unit. Crap!

  “Good work. You really didn’t have to stay so late.”