Devil's Claw

by Valerie Davisson

  For now, the best gift she could give her friend was moral support.

  With Bonnie’s crisis dealt with, Logan’s mind turned back to Amy. She checked, but there was still no message or missed call on her phone.

  Where was she?

  At Bonnie’s suggestion, she tried the Thai restaurant, but no one had seen them there. The mall was closed.

  “Of course!” Logan said, jumping off the couch and racing toward the front door.

  She started pulling on her shoes, tossing Bonnie’s back to her for her to put on.

  Bonnie obeyed, assuming Logan would explain why they were getting ready to go out in a storm.

  “The only thing between here and the mall that’s not residential or open coast along that stretch of state park is the sea otter center,” she said. “Amy loves that little otter.”

  “Yep, I bet she stopped off for a visit,” Bonnie agreed. “Maybe they got stuck when the storm hit—they’re probably there now, just waiting it out.”

  “That doesn’t explain why she didn’t call, though . . . ,” Logan said.

  Simultaneously jumping off the couch, Bonnie grabbed her keys, Logan yanked open the door, and they raced into the slanting rain toward Bonnie’s SUV.

  Mothers united!

  33

  Saturday, July 25, 2015

  The storm quickly muted when they climbed in Bonnie’s Toyota Highlander. No one was on the road, so Bonnie had no trouble making good time up PCH.

  The Friends of the Sea Otter sign at the entrance looked anything but friendly in the harsh glare of the headlights. Thanks to the storm, the narrow road in had turned into a pockmarked obstacle course, slick with rain. Navigating without streetlights didn’t help, but they made it to the gravel parking lot without sliding into a ditch.

  Almost giddy with relief, Logan saw Lola parked out in front.

  She took a deep breath. Now she could get mad.

  “Amy’s cell phone better have been eaten by aliens,” she said as she launched herself out of the car, digging in her purse for the keys.

  Bonnie laughed as she clicked the door locks on and ran with Logan in the rain toward the building.

  “She probably just forgot to charge it,” Bonnie said as she shook out her jacket when they got there.

  That doesn’t explain why she couldn’t have used Liam’s phone, though . . . , Logan thought.

  Just then, her own phone rang.

  It was Liam. She needed to stay calm and not yell at him. He probably had a perfectly reasonable explanation for not calling when Amy’s phone died.

  “Liam, thanks for calling, we just pulled up. I figured Amy probably talked you into making a pit stop to play with Otter 1.”

  “What? Where are you?” Liam asked. “Isn’t Amy with you? I was calling to make sure you guys were OK in case you were driving back in the storm. I thought you were wedding dress shopping.”

  Logan tried to sound calm.

  “No, Liam, she’s not with me. She borrowed my car and said she was with you. Bonnie and I are at the sea otter center now. The car’s here—I’m sure she’s inside.”

  They’d reached the front entrance, and Logan was unlocking the door. The repairs were finished a week ago.

  “I’ll have Amy call you as soon as we get inside. I’m sure her phone just died or she’s someplace inside that doesn’t get reception. Don’t worry,” Logan said. “We’ll call you in a few.”

  She, however, was definitely worried. None of this made sense. With a growing uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, Logan got into the elevator with Bonnie and pushed the button for the lab on level 2.

  Logan stepped out first. She looked around, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The back door was open for fresh air, and Gina’s purse was on the stainless steel surface of the island in the middle of the lab. Then Logan remembered that Gina and Dennis had driven to La Jolla. Why would they leave the door open?

  And that wasn’t Gina’s purse.

  Logan and Bonnie could hear faint wheezing sounds coming from the other side of the lab. Bonnie flipped on the light, and Logan raced around the table, toward the sounds.

  Solange Sauvage lay crumpled on the floor, barely breathing. Except for the ugly bruises on her throat, she could have been sleeping.

  Who would want to hurt Solange?

  “Call nine one one!”

  Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions to stay put until help arrived, Logan began searching for Amy. There was nothing they could do for Solange other than make sure she didn’t move until the ambulance got there.

  “I’ve got this,” Bonnie said, shooing her away. “Go! Find Amy!”

  The obvious first place to look was Otter 1’s nursery tank room, but it was empty.

  “Damn!” Logan muttered.

  Hoping beyond hope that Amy had not been foolish enough to take the little otter out in the storm, but needing to check all possibilities, Logan found a flashlight hanging on one of the pegboards on the wall by the exit, went through the open doors, and began clanging down the stairs, fighting against the wind. Barely able to hold on to the railing and keep the flashlight in the other hand, she was almost at the bottom before she saw him.

  “Jeff!”

  The young man lay flat on the cement. Rain pelted his body, plastering jet-black hair to his forehead, down which pink, watery rivulets, tainted with what must be his blood, shimmered in the beam of the flashlight.

  “Oh my God!”

  Logan stumbled the rest of the way down.

  Although he was obviously dead, she reached out and felt for a pulse. Nothing. Cold to the touch. Disbelief flooded through her. He couldn’t be dead. He was too young!

  She tried again. She was shaking. Maybe he was still alive. She couldn’t feel even a flicker. She held her breath in case her own breathing was preventing her from discerning his. Still nothing.

  Why? Why would anyone want to hurt these two people? There was no money to steal, no reason for anyone to do this.

  Logan’s first thought was to administer CPR, but she knew enough not to risk rolling him over in case his neck or back was injured. She shouted up to Bonnie to let dispatch know they had another victim. She couldn’t bring herself to say body.

  Bonnie waved over the railing to let her know she heard and ducked back inside to stay with Solange.

  Nothing else she could do for Jeff until the EMTs arrived, Logan ran around the pool enclosure, hoping to find Amy and Otter 1 somehow safe and sound, huddled inside against the rain.

  The floodlight was on, but the interior was empty.

  Panic rising, not knowing where else to look, she jumped off the small rock wall at the edge of the otter pool, onto the short, crescent beach, and ran toward the water. She couldn’t achieve more than a knee squat without getting knocked down by the wind, so she crawled over the rocks tumbling off Devil’s Claw, searching for any sign of Amy or Otter 1.

  Then she saw what else was missing. The raft. There was usually a Zodiac raft tucked back here, tied to a metal ring drilled into one of the larger rocks. Gina always kept it down here.

  Was it possible that Amy had taken out the inflatable? Why would she do that in a storm? And did Amy even know how to use it? Did she go before the storm and then get caught in it? She wouldn’t take the otter out—she knew that the pup was nowhere near ready to be released back into the wild.

  The only explanation that made sense was that her fragile daughter, still not completely recovered from her bout with malaria, had escaped whatever evil had happened here at the center, only to be thrust into a roiling, angry Pacific Ocean, alone and adrift with a baby sea otter in the middle of a raging storm.

  “Bonnie!” Logan yelled as she scrambled back over the rock wall and raced up the stairs. “Bonnie!”

  The emergency services dispat
cher couldn’t believe she was getting a third call from the same number. At least this time it was not for another injured or possibly deceased person, but a missing one.

  A call was put in to the Coast Guard.

  She hated to see them have to go out in weather like this, but that’s what they trained for. If a missing girl was out there, they’d find her.

  34

  Saturday, July 25, 2015

  A uniformed officer Logan recognized, a friend of Rick’s, nodded to her from across the room but kept at his assigned task, cordoning off the lab with yellow crime-scene tape. She and Bonnie had been placed on two of the tall stools in the hallway, instructed not to touch anything. She felt like she’d been sent to the principal’s office.

  Every corner and cupboard on every floor, as well as the surrounding grounds, had been searched. Twice. No Amy. No otter. All clear.

  Except her daughter was still missing.

  Logan stared across the lab to what she could see of the storm outside. Her body clenched. The Coast Guard already had one helicopter in the air and a cutter on its way.

  “They’re going to find her, Logan,” Bonnie said. Bonnie had no compunctions about lying if it would comfort her friend.

  A small community, Jasper only had two homicide detectives. She and Bonnie were instructed to stay glued to their stools until they arrived. Rick called and reassured her every cop in Jasper was looking for Amy. In the meantime, Logan reached Ben as he was driving back from a job in South County. He sensed it was more important to organize a search party for Amy than come hold Logan’s hand. He and Liam were both down at Tava’e’s doing exactly that.

  Through Tava’e’s infamous coconut telegraph, half of Jasper was calling in or showing up to volunteer their services. Sally and Ned, Taylor, Amosa, they were all there. The only person not there was Brandon. She’d asked Ben to hold off contacting him until she could call him herself and tell him about Jeff. He was going to be devastated. They had been friends since kindergarten.

  A possible double murder didn’t happen every day in Jasper. One victim was definitely dead, the second, an elderly woman, in critical condition at the hospital. The coroner would do the initial intake. The case didn’t merit a medical examiner, but LA was sending an extra crime-scene tech to assist in processing the scene. Jasper’s tech, Esturban, who operated as a crew of one, had started but was grateful for the eminent arrival of reinforcements.

  No one had yet brought Jeff’s body up from the deck below, although they’d taken some blue plastic tarp down, forming a rain tent over that area. Logan blinked back tears and tried not to see the stark image of the young man’s white face or the rain hitting his unblinking eyes. She squeezed her own eyes tightly shut and tried to shake away the memory.

  Solange, though barely breathing, was still alive. At least, she was when they rolled her out. The EMTs had very gently placed the tiny woman on the gurney and taken her down the elevator to the waiting ambulance. Logan didn’t know what Solange would want, but just before the elevator doors closed, she reached in and gave one of the EMTs a piece of paper with Scott Dekker’s name. She didn’t have his number or know where he was staying, but someone would be able to track him down.

  If he really was Solange’s half brother, he was her only living relative and should at least be informed what had happened.

  While they were waiting for the detectives, one of the officers had fired up a coffee machine somewhere and brought them each a cup. Bonnie only drank tea, but Logan numbly accepted the gift, if only to give her hands something to do.

  When the detectives finally arrived, she recognized one of them from two summers ago. She’d seen Detective Andrews from a distance, inside a glassblowers’ cage, just steps from the broken body of a young woman who’d been brutally murdered. Tall. Black hair. Same white shirt, suit, and dress shoes. Didn’t the man ever wear jeans and tennis shoes?

  He hadn’t seen her that day, because she was, as usual, someplace she wasn’t supposed to be, digging for information she wasn’t supposed to have, in order to help clear her friend, Thomas, suspected of killing the girl.

  Logan remembered Detective Andrews’s monosyllabic efficiency when talking with Iona, the coroner, and other witnesses. She hoped he was as competent as he seemed.

  Now that the shock was wearing off, she felt angry. Angry at whoever murdered Jeff, attacked Solange, and terrified her daughter into the Pacific Ocean during a violent storm.

  But right now, all she wanted was to find Amy. Alive and well, preferably with a baby sea otter in tow.

  She went over her conversation with the Coast Guard officer who’d called her as soon as the dispatcher made the initial report.

  “Yes, she is most probably in a Zodiac inflatable. No, I don’t know the exact size, but it’s gray with a black stripe, I think . . . Yes, it has a motor . . . the kind you start like a lawnmower . . . Registered to a Gina—I can’t think of her last name right now—she’s the director of the sea otter center here, if rafts—inflatable boats—are registered, I don’t know!”

  She was rambling again.

  Fighting to remain calm and answer the nice officer’s questions, Logan slowed down. She understood it was dangerous for the Coast Guard to go out in a storm, and that the officer wanted to make sure there was a good reason to do so, that Amy was actually out on the ocean, in need of rescue, and not cooling her heels in a coffee shop or bar somewhere after a fight with her boyfriend.

  “Yes, she left before the storm to do some shopping . . . said she’d be back tonight.”

  She neglected to add that Amy had not told her the total truth about this particular shopping trip.

  “No, she didn’t give an exact time. No, she didn’t say she was going to go to the sea otter center, but she must have since the car was there. No, she’s never done this before. This isn’t some runaway teenager. My daughter is twenty-four years old. No, for the umpteenth time, her fiancé hasn’t seen her, either, and they didn’t get into a fight.”

  Finally, the officer had agreed to instigate a full-on search for one Amy McKenna, twenty-four-year-old female, alone in an inflatable raft, missing since approximately 5:00 p.m. or later, somewhere in the vicinity of the rock outcropping at the north end of Jasper’s Main Beach, known as Devil’s Claw.

  In light of the facts that her daughter was missing and he knew Rick, Detective Andrews only took brief initial interviews from Bonnie and Logan before letting them go, with firm promises to show up first thing in the morning to give complete, formal statements at the station.

  When finally released by the police, Bonnie and Logan practically raced to Bonnie’s car. After they’d called Liam to tell him where they were going, Logan pulled up GPS on her phone and plugged in their destination: Newport Beach Coast Guard Station. It was the one that handled rescues for this area, she discovered, and the one from where the search helicopter launched.

  After he’d gathered the information he needed about Amy, the Coast Guard commander told Logan in no uncertain terms that she was to wait at home, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  35

  Saturday, July 25, 2015

  Lashed by increasingly furious winds, more rain than Logan had seen in years sheeted down the massive bay windows on the observation deck of the Coast Guard station. That and the complete absence of any starlight or moonlight prevented them from seeing anything outside. She and Bonnie had been relegated to the visitor’s section, while all the main action was taking place downstairs in the control room.

  She wished she hadn’t come. She was just about to suggest they go back to Tava’e’s to help Ben and Liam with the search when a junior officer poked his head around the door.

  “They’ve spotted her, ma’am,” he said, and then quickly corrected himself. “At least, they spotted a raft and what they think is someone who might be your daughter back up in one of the se
a caves, near your daughter’s last known location. The spotlight caught a corner of some clothing. Could you verify what color clothing she was wearing?” He waited for her answer, holding his breath.

  Logan tried to focus, thinking back to this afternoon, which seemed light-years away.

  “Green! Lime green!” she shouted.

  Amy was wearing a lime-green North Face T-shirt and some shorts when she left this afternoon. Logan bought her that T-shirt up in Portland, Oregon, last year.

  “Bingo!” He grinned and raced back upstairs.

  Logan’s eyes leaked with relief, and she accepted a gripping hug from Bonnie. They’d found her, but now they had to somehow get her on board the helicopter and bring her home. She tried not to imagine her daughter injured or worse.

  They heard the young man shouting to someone as he took the stairs two at a time, back down to the control center.

  “OK! Mom verified—bright-green T-shirt . . .”

  The rest of his conversation was lost to them, but Logan resisted the urge to race after him. They needed to do whatever it was they did to bring Amy home—she would only be in the way.

  Waiting is harder than doing.

  Everything about an ocean rescue is loud. The howling winds, the crashing waves, the rotary blades, the engine. All communication between pilot, copilot, rescue swimmer, and other personnel was done through headsets. But they were there. They’d spotted the girl and were now in position.

  Twenty feet below, the sea roiled and churned. Both the pilot and the rescue swimmer eyed the sea cave where the girl was last seen, calibrating the power of the waves surging in and out. He’d have to time it just right.

  “Swimmer One, Swimmer One, be advised, we’ve got twelve minutes to get this done . . .”

  Kevin nodded and got in position. A former high school swim team captain, he was all lean muscle and long limbs. This was his seventeenth rescue, but only his second sea cave. Extending powerful legs punctuated by long black swim fins out the open copter door, keeping perfect form, he jumped. Just another day at the office.