“Shakespeare,” Bolger said, nodding.
“No.” Jack said. “William Blake?” He lifted his brows and Hannah nodded. He saw where she was going with this.
“No.” Bolger shook his head. “That is definitely a Shakespeare reference.”
She could see Jack’s instant skepticism, but dismissed it. “Listen,” she whispered, attempting to exclude Bolger from their conversation. “The victims are lured to the crime scenes, right?” She pressed her palm to her chest. “I’m here. I was led here by the killer’s geographical profile.” Bolger peered at them, attempting to overhear. “Death by tempest, Jack. Remember?”
“It’s a coincidence.” Jack shook his head.
“It’s a lead.” And if Jack wasn’t so stubborn, he’d admit it. “You,” she pointed to Bolger. “Get me everything you have on that vessel. Owners’ contact information, specs, contracts, dock logs, everything. Do you understand? I want the owners here, if possible, if not, on the phone. Tell them it’s a federal investigation, so if they refuse, there will be obstruction of justice charges. No joke.”
“You’re making my life difficult,” Bolger said. His grimace was full throttled, but it didn’t look as if he would push back. “These people are rich. When they find out the feds are looking for them, why wouldn’t they head the other way? I need them to pay their bills.”
“Do I need to explain ‘obstruction of justice,’ Mr. Bolger? Get it done!” Jack didn’t wait for his answer, but turned his back on the dockmaster and pulled out his phone. The line must have connected quickly, because he was talking into it soon thereafter. “Ferguson, we might have something. Tell Pepperidge we need a warrant ASAP for the Teapot, a yacht docked at Constitution Marina. We’re trying to locate the owners, but they’ve been missing for two months.” He waved a hand to garner Bolger’s attention. “What kind of vessel exactly?”
“A 2001 Sanlorenzo yacht. A small one,” the dockmaster said. “No one’s been on her for months. Like I said, the owners haven’t answered calls, texts, or certified letters so I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“It’s a yacht,” Jack said to Ferguson. “We’re thinking a tempest in a teapot. Get Charlie Foulkes and his forensic team down here.” He hung up.
“Where’s the yacht?” Hannah opened the door, impatient to start. “What direction? How far down the dock, Mr. Bolger?”
Jack leaned toward her, keeping his tone quiet. “Ferguson thinks this is a dead end.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think if you’re right, you’re in danger.”
“Right now, it’s just a lead,” she said.
Bolger pointed. “Take a right, and it’s the third dock down. The corner dock.”
She took off, leaving Jack behind. He caught up with her, grabbed her arm, preventing her from sprinting ahead. “What did we agree on, Hannah?” he said. “Attached to my hip. That means you’re not barreling into a situation without backup.”
“Don’t pretend you think we’ll find something.” She pulled her arm from his grip, and he didn’t make it easy. “You think I’m crazy.”
He put his hands up, as if trying to gentle a colt. “I trust your instincts, just…let’s act accordingly.”
“Of course.” It galled Hannah that yesterday she answered to the lieutenant, and today, when she needed all obstacles leveled, her decisions had to be vetted by Jack. She forced herself to take his advice without snapping, when what she wanted was to sprint to this Teapot yacht and end this threat to her and Ellen. Their daughter. Her frustration was making it hard to think.
“We wait for the warrant,” he said, as if expecting an argument.
“Of course.” She reined in her impatience.
The sky was deep blue, not a cloud in sight, and the breeze smelled salty, like seaweed. Tourists were meandering, enjoying the temperate day. It was the least conducive setting to violence she could imagine, yet as moments stretched to minutes, there was a tingling between her shoulder blades, as if she were someone’s target. “Tempest in a teapot. If it’s not a coincidence, the killer could be here, right now, watching us,” she said.
“Maybe we should wait inside.” Jack surveilled the parking lot. She could tell he was fighting the urge to drag her away. “We can wait for the warrant in the office.” Fearing his suggestion would morph to an order, she threw caution to the wind and headed down the walkway toward the third dock on the corner. He caught up with her just as the Teapot appeared ahead; white, sleek, as big as a house. “Hannah, you said you’d wait for the warrant!” His eyes locked on the Teapot. “This is a small yacht?”
“A lesson in perspective.” Hannah indicated the larger yachts in the distance, moored in open sea, requiring their occupants to use a dingy to travel from dock to ship. The Teapot, however, was easily accessible. She stepped onto its gangway.
“Hey!” Jack said. “We agreed. We’re waiting, Hannah.”
“I hear something. Maybe a call of distress.” She pulled her gun, bending her knees, trying to see into the portholes from that angle.
“Bullshit. Come back.” He folded his arms across his chest and grimaced at her, as if there was no doubt in his mind she’d follow orders.
The more Jack resisted, the more she became convinced there was something to be seen on this yacht. “Maybe there’s a crime in progress. Don’t know. Sure would like to.” She jogged across the gangway, making a considerable amount of noise.
“Without a warrant, nothing will be admissible.” He threw his hands in the air, his frustration on full display.
“So you do think this might be a solid lead.” Ha! She could see the truth on his face. Hannah took the final step onto the yacht’s deck and heard his truncated curse.
“Come back!” Jack hurried after her, making a racket. “This is not our deal, Hannah.”
True. And she couldn’t help but silently list the protocols she was breaking. She knew them all, because Hannah was a by-the-books kind of gal, but she recognized this case wasn’t a by-the-books kind of case. Her reality had changed dramatically the moment she got Ferguson’s call this morning. It made her less worried about an eventual court case and more worried about surviving.
The stairs leading into the belly of the yacht were halfway to the stern side, and if there was anything to be found, it would be down there. She quickly descended, afraid Jack would physically attempt to stop her. When she reached the stair’s bottom, she halted just inside the door. It was almost as if an unseen hand had barred her way.
Ahead was a wall of photographs. Of her. Of Twoomey, Zelezny, and Stone.
“Shit.” Jack jostled her aside as he stepped inside, his gun at the ready.
Yup. Shit. They’d found their killer’s lair.
Hannah approached the wall, in a daze. One picture jumped out at her. She pointed, making her index finger hover over the photo, but careful not to touch it. “This was taken last month, first day on the case. That afternoon I’d spilled coffee on my shirt. See that?” She pointed to the stain. “I’ve yet to bring it to the cleaners and it’s still on the bottom of my laundry basket.”
“The date, Hannah. What was the date it was taken?”
“July 15. Maybe around 5:00 p.m. Stone’s body had just been discovered.”
It was creepy to realize that someone had taken Hannah’s picture without her consent. It was horrifying to realize they took the picture with the purpose of hunting her.
Jack pulled out his phone and dialed.
She pressed her hand to his arm. “The killer has inside information, Jack. My first day on the job? I was targeted long before I received that email.” Her pulse raced as she processed this new development. Did the killer know about Ellen? “We have to think about who might be leaking information, or maybe—” She didn’t want to say it, but felt it had to be said. “Maybe the killer is law
enforcement.”
Phone to his ear, Jack nodded. “Let’s worry about that later. I need to get you to a safe place.” He peered out the door, looking up the stairs, his back to her. “Lieutenant? Yeah, it’s Benton. We have a shitload of evidence on a yacht in Constitution Marina and we need help expediting a warrant. Yeah. It’s the marina where the Stone woman was killed.” Using her phone, Hannah snapped one photo after another of the board. “Get uniformed officers here ASAP. I don’t want Hannah anywhere near this place, and need to hand it off to forensics. Ferguson should be with Deming. We need everyone on the team here. I’ll call Gilroy when I hang up.”
Hannah was having a hard time believing what she was seeing, but so far, there were no pictures of Ellen, so that was good. Seeing these photos made her precarious situation seem more real…real in a way that an innocuous email hadn’t driven home.
“He’s not coming back here.” She shook her head. “Odds that he’d keep his home base next to a crime scene are statistically nil. It makes no sense.”
“Yet here it is.” He glanced at her, waiting, still on the phone.
“He’s not coming back, Jack.”
“You don’t know that.” He turned away from her, focusing on his phone conversation. “What’s the soonest you can get a cruiser here?”
Hannah snatched the phone from Jack’s hand. “Lieutenant, Deming was right. The Stone girl must be an outlier. She must have stumbled upon this site, got caught, and the killer took her out.”
Jack snatched the phone back, glaring at her. Hannah faced the photos, forcing herself to see them as an investigator rather than a potential victim. She took wide shots of the wall in case the photos were arranged in a pattern that could be a clue. Then she approached the wall and studied a photo of her leaving her brownstone. She’d still been carrying baby weight around the middle, so had worn her jacket buttoned to disguise the bump. It was only a month ago, yet seemed like forever.
Jack’s fingers were white-knuckled as he clenched the phone, holding it to his ear. “Okay. Yeah. I will.” Then he disconnected the line.
Hannah didn’t reholster her gun, but kept it at the ready. “I’d give my left arm to know if Stone was on this yacht.”
“She was knocked unconscious, then dumped in the harbor. Seems risky to kill her here and then dump the body so close to all this evidence.”
“Maybe hauling her body to a second site was riskier.”
“Like the Freedom Trail?” Jack scanned the room, fairly twitching with pent-up energy.
“Exactly.” A shudder ran the length of her body. “This photo board is freaking me the hell out.”
Jack scowled. “Don’t tell me that, because if you tell me that, I have to assume you can’t handle this—”
“I’m handling it. This is me handling this. Let’s not fight. Not now, when”—she pointed her gun’s muzzle at the photos—“that’s staring at me.”
He sighed. “You know the files better than I do. Maybe Stone was at a bar and someone brought her here. That would indicate the perp is young enough to gain a twentysomething’s attention. Did Stone say she was going to a bar? Maybe a party.”
“She had no one to tell, Jack. Stone was a loner. They’re all loners. No close family, and Stone’s coworkers said she kept to herself.”
Jack glanced at his watch, and then at the stairs leading out of the yacht. Even if a cruiser was in the area, it would still take them time to find the yacht. Jack’s impatience spoke volumes about his unease, and it mirrored her own.
“Pray we get the warrant quickly, and this place gives us DNA to work with.” Jack’s lips pressed together, and his expression clouded with anger. “You might have just broken this case wide open.”
“But? For the life of me, I know you didn’t say but, although it sure sounds as if but was implied.”
“But you put yourself at risk by coming onboard, and by definition, you put my life at risk, too. You’ve broken protocol and our deal, so you’re going into protective custody. No more arguments. Got it?”
“Bullshit.” Hannah shook her head. He couldn’t make her, and knew it. “I want to interview the owners of the yacht.”
It was his turn to shake his head. “You heard Bolger. They’re long gone. And I don’t see them good for the murders, anyway.” He indicated the wall of photos. “They’d be fools to leave this here, then not pay their bills. It’s just inviting attention.”
True, but… “Every serial killer wants to get caught.”
He looked over his shoulder toward the door, fairly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Yeah, but they want to get caught when they’re good and ready. This is here for a reason, and so are we.”
She agreed. “He wanted me to see this.” She peered closer at the photos. “Jack, how could he have known I’d find it? That I’d make the connection between the stanza and the yacht, or even that Bolger would mention its name?”
“Bolger didn’t need to mention it. Sooner or later you’d look at the marina’s list of yachts moored here. You’d have found it.” They exchanged glances, and Hannah recognized his worry. “We need a good long talk with Mr. Peter Bolger, dockmaster extraordinaire.”
“No.” She shook her head, not believing his implication. “I just can’t—” Then she thought on it a moment more. “Yeah?” The dockmaster? A serial killer? Was it horrible that she hoped it was true? Hannah scanned the rest of the yacht’s interior.
Pollen had gotten inside and covered everything with a fine yellow powder. Paintings were missing off the walls and large squares of dust marked where they’d hung. All personal items were gone: lamps, doodads, all missing. The only evidence beyond the photos were various disturbed layers of dust and pollen, confirmation that activity in the yacht happened at different times over the last months.
“The place is stripped clean,” she said.
“An abandoned million-plus yacht. And this.” He pointed to the wall of pictures. Evidence. “We can’t stay any longer,” Jack said. “The police will be here any moment, hopefully with a warrant.”
Then a cell phone rang, and they looked at each other, but it wasn’t Hannah’s, and Jack pulled his from his pocket and found his wasn’t ringing, either.
Hannah followed the sound to a door in the corner that she’d presumed was a utility closet. Thinking there might be someone hiding in there, or worse yet, a body with a phone, she gripped her gun with both hands and raced to the door. She waited at one side of the door for Jack to approach and back her up. Jack gripped the doorknob, paused, then pulled the door wide, revealing two propane tanks duct-taped together with a small block of C4 and a cell phone attached to a detonator. There were seconds left on the countdown to zero.
Hannah’s body flooded with adrenaline. Jack grabbed her arm and pivoted toward the stairs, and up, until they were in the salty air, under the pristine blue sky. She heard her breathing, a stream of expletives spilling from Jack’s mouth, and the sound of the ringing cell phone. When her foot hit teak decking, Jack hauled her to his side, lifting her off her feet as he continued to run, his long legs eating the distance to the gangway.
The bomb went off with a concussive boom that forced the air from her lungs. Her eyes closed. She was separated from Jack in that instant, and sailed through the air.
Next thing she knew, she was plunging into the cold, dark harbor water, alone, and her descent seemed never-ending. It continued past the assumption that she could ever hold her breath long enough to break the water’s surface again. Her world became shock, a muffled ringing in her ears, and the disorienting blackness that made it impossible to know what was up or down. She froze, steadily moving in the water, not knowing if she was still sinking, or if she was floating back up.
Then she panicked as pain racked her body. She couldn’t breathe, and her lungs burned. Kicking, clawing the water, she saw a flicker of light, and
swam toward it, though its distance seemed unreachable. But she did it for Ellen…for Jack. They urged her on, gave her a reason to push past her fear and suffering, to fight the promise of oblivion.
When her head broke the water’s surface, she was more surprised than relieved, because she was in so much pain. But she was alive. Gasping, coughing, orienting herself in a world of floating, burning debris. The yacht was on fire, crackling, and people were gathering along the dock, shouting and pointing.
She was alive. Sobs made breathing harder as she slapped the water’s surface, barely afloat. “Jack!” She turned this way and that, struggling to tread water to find him. “Jack!” Did he even know how to swim? The topic had never come up. Had the explosion’s concussion rendered him unconscious? Was Jack drowning? He couldn’t die. Not again.
Hannah dove under the inky water, blindly searching with her hands, desperate to find him. When her lungs gave out, she kicked to the surface long enough to regain her breath and then dive again. It seemed to go on forever. Reaching, swimming in circles, feeling for his body. Hannah popped up for air again, shaking and crying.
“Jack!” She’d been helpless when he’d died before, and was helpless now. She couldn’t live though it again. “Jack!” People along the shore were pointing at her, shouting to the gathering first response teams on shore. She wanted to scream at them, tell them Jack needed their help, but couldn’t find the breath to make a sound.
“Hannah!” Jack’s shout echoed over the water. She saw him! His powerful strokes quickly had him by her side.
Sobbing, never so happy to see another human being in her life, Hannah treaded water, breathing deeply. He was alive. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord. It had been her idea to board the yacht. It would have been her fault if he’d died without knowing he had a daughter. She felt her body sinking, her arms no longer strong enough to keep her above the surface.
Jack grabbed her from behind, keeping them both afloat as he swam them to shore. “Are you okay?”
“Where were you?” She leaned her head back, staring at the blue sky, tears blurring her vision. “I looked for you, was calling you.”
Catch a Killer Page 9