The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  Their wide-eyed expressions didn’t sit well with me, and neither did the grim faces of the four men clustered at the end of the dock. There, where Gunnar’s Pier met the surf and the sky, a tow truck rumbled at the edge of the quay. Its driver, in a grungy gray shirt and work pants, manned a winch and boom at the tail of the truck. He didn’t look happy about it. As Barrett and I approached, I could hear the rattle and rush of the tow truck’s cable slipping over the winch and through the boom despite the screaming seagulls reeling overhead.

  A coastie, in the guard’s characteristic dark-blue fatigues and black boots, nudged his partner. The partner called to Barrett. “Diver’s attaching the cable now.”

  Barrett nodded acknowledgment.

  I left his side to peer over the edge of the quay.

  In the water below, a circle of DayGlo orange floats marked off an area just beyond the pier—and the cable cut right through the middle of it. My guess was those floats were the surface side of an industrial-strength net or even a lightweight steel cage meant to protect some secret of the sea. Because past the ring, half a dozen dorsal fins plied the water. And while I wasn’t much of a beach body, I knew that for every shark I saw, there were plenty more I didn’t see. Worse yet, all those sharks had searched out this spot for a reason—and I figured that reason involved a very messy death.

  “This won’t be pretty,” the fourth man in the group said to no one in particular.

  He wore a windbreaker zipped to his chin, wire-rimmed glasses, and carried a black satchel like a doctor in days of yore. I was willing to bet he was a medical examiner. And that he’d been out of med school for all of ten minutes.

  Barrett confirmed at least part of this theory when he said, “Jamie Sinclair, this is Dr. Ethan Vickers, from the coroner’s office.”

  Dr. Vickers paused to look me up and down as if I were something the cat dragged in, then rushed to shake my hand.

  But our howdy-do was interrupted when one of the coasties shouted, “There he is!”

  We turned our faces to the water just as a diver broke the surface, the black hood of his wetsuit shining in the sun. He flashed a thumbs-up, grabbed for a rope ladder hanging off the pier. He scurried up the ladder as a cloudy red stain bloomed beneath him in the sea.

  I didn’t need the medical examiner to tell me that cloud was blood.

  The tow truck’s winch cranked into high gear. The cable drew taut. Beads of seawater threaded the wire like pearls as inch by inch the machinery pulled its cargo to the surface.

  White foam bubbled into view. A deep, dark square rose right behind it. The Gulf let it go as the tow truck’s winch hauled a tall box with wheels from the water. Except it wasn’t a box. It was a trash can the good residents of Beauville would load up with their household refuse and push to the curb.

  The thing was purple. Except someone had added silver duct tape across the top of it. The tape was doing a pretty decent job of keeping the hinged lid closed, but the seal wasn’t watertight. The tow truck’s winch whirred and strained with the weight of the trash can’s water and whatever else was inside.

  White numbers had been incised into the receptacle’s side. White letters spelled out the name of the trash collection company. They read: DAISY MAE’S.

  Hunch Nevis’s company.

  No wonder Barrett had called me in a hurry. No wonder he’d asked whether I was all right. He’d feared I’d pushed Nevis too far—and had ended up feeding the fishes from the bottom of one of Nevis’s trash cans.

  But someone was in that trash can. Someone had drawn all those sharks. And that someone could be Corinne.

  Sick with the thought, I felt sweaty all of a sudden. Not even the stiff coastal breeze cooled me down. The sensation grew worse when the coasties grabbed the canister’s handle with gloved hands.

  They guided the trash can onto the pier. Dr. Vickers opened his bag and snatched up a camera. He took snapshots of the container from every conceivable angle, as a bloody puddle grew beneath it on the decking.

  “Here we go,” Dr. Vickers said at last.

  Gingerly, with latex-gloved hands, he lifted a corner of the lid’s duct tape. I had to fight the urge to reach across him, to rip the stuff from the plastic myself. But procedure had its place. I knew it. And I needed to respect it.

  When the lid was free, Vickers lifted it. He swung it backward on its hinge. The container brimmed with seawater—and thanks to the buoyancy that comes with decaying flesh, a blanched and bloated body shot from the surface to bob like a bass fisherman’s float.

  “Well, we can rule out a boating accident,” one coastie said to the other.

  It was a morbid joke, meant to break the tension and help us all deal with a horrible truth. But the guy was right. This had been no accident. Because the victim, bobbing in the Daisy Mae’s trash can, had a bullet hole running right through the middle of the forehead.

  In my ear, Barrett murmured, “We can rule out Corinne, too.”

  I nodded vigorously. But my knees, which had turned to jelly, still wobbled. Because I recognized the dead man in the canister.

  It was Eddie Jepson.

  “Nothing special about the entry wound,” Dr. Vickers declared as he bent close to Eddie’s face. “No exit wound, though. This could be the work of a twenty-two or even a thirty-eight-caliber weapon. I’ll know for sure when I dig out the slug back at the morgue.”

  With that info ringing in my ears, I turned on my heel and took off for my car. Barrett could tell the cops and the coasties and the doc that their victim was the now-notorious bomber, Eddie Jepson. He could notify April Callahan of Eddie’s death, too. She wouldn’t like it. He’d been her prized suspect in the Lady Luck’s destruction, and she couldn’t wring the truth out of him now.

  “Hey.” Barrett caught up with me on the run. He hooked my elbow, spun me around to face him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m dandy,” I announced. “You?”

  Barrett’s face shuttered.

  I took that as a bad sign.

  He said, “Where did you go after you left the police station this morning?”

  “I didn’t pop Eddie Jepson and stuff him in a trash can, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see him?”

  I jerked my arm from Barrett’s hand. “No.”

  “Did you make contact with your friend Corinne?”

  “Corinne didn’t do this, Barrett. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.”

  “Well, I’ll agree with couldn’t. It took some muscle to pack Jepson feet first into that trash container.”

  “Muscle,” I muttered.

  In my experience, muscle only got a person so far.

  “Hunch Nevis has plenty of muscle,” Barrett said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “He does.” I glared down at my boots rather than meet Barrett’s eye. “But Nevis was at his hunting lodge all morning and a lot of his muscle was with him.”

  When the implication hit him, Barrett huffed out a long-suffering sigh. He paced to the edge of the pier, glared up at the surrounding seagulls as if struggling with his temper. And I couldn’t blame him for it. He’d invited me to Mississippi for a lovely weekend. Instead, I’d been a trial.

  I called after him.

  “Nevis didn’t do this, Barrett. He already had Eddie under this thumb. As you said this morning, he arranged for Eddie to be released on bond, and then he made sure the woman who posted that bond could afford it.”

  Brows drawn, Barrett returned to me. “You’re saying Eddie’s killer wanted his murder to look like Nevis’s work.”

  “I’m saying Nevis has more than muscle. He’s got brains. He wouldn’t dump Eddie in his own company’s trash can.”

  “Who would?”

  “I can’t say for certain.”

  And this was true.

  Still, I had a pretty good idea who’d shot Eddie through the head.

  “My money
,” I told Barrett, “is on the owner of a thirty-eight.”

  And I knew just where to begin looking for him.

  Chapter 34

  Barrett hadn’t been happy when I’d left him with more questions than answers on the sun-bleached boards of Gunnar’s Pier. But when it came to the murder of Eddie Jepson and bringing his killer to justice, Barrett and his compadres needed to stick to facts. And all I had was conjecture. Call mine an educated guess, but the knot that tied Eddie to Hunch Nevis was not the same one that tied Nevis to Ray and Corinne. The only thread that ran through all four of these lives—and through Monique Wells’s life, too—was Bran.

  And I hadn’t forgotten that Bran kept a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special stashed in his desk at home. The snub-nosed revolver had been ready to rock and roll with a full complement of .38-caliber rounds in its cylinder when I’d laid eyes on it. It bothered me to think I’d held that gun in my hands, that I’d returned it to its drawer, and that one of its bullets might’ve ended up in Eddie’s brain box.

  With this regret pressing on me, I sped to Bran’s apartment building. I parked in the shade of the complex across the street as the sun went down. Lights flickered on in the unit downstairs. The savory scent of broiling fish wafted from the place across the way. In the apartment at the back, kids squabbled loudly over television channels and which cartoon to watch. But nothing and no one moved past Bran’s darkened window in the upstairs corner of the building. And I began to suspect he wasn’t home.

  On foot, I circled the place. The downspout I’d accidentally torn from the gutter during my emergency exit still leaned at an odd angle across the alley. I didn’t know what Bran was driving these days, but no vehicles looked out of place to me here, or out front—and that made me bold.

  I took the steps to Bran’s apartment at a trot, determined to break in again. Except I didn’t need to ply my skills. Because Bran’s door was ajar.

  I nudged it open with my toe.

  Bran’s TV was off. His bed was made. Clean dishes gleamed in the rack at the sink. But on his desk, his lockbox stood wide open. And at first glance, I saw his snubby was gone.

  I hotfooted it to his bureau, tucked in the alcove by the bed. I tugged on the top drawer. Sticky with humidity, it resisted before giving way—and when it did, it was empty, save for a dingy athletic sock with a hole in the heel wide enough to accommodate a golf ball.

  Hastily, I checked the remaining the drawers. I should’ve found shirts and socks and underwear, but I didn’t. Bran had cleaned out his clothes.

  Maybe Bran’s things were at the laundry. But I wasn’t willing to bet on it. Like Monique, Bran had skipped town—and maybe he’d taken Corinne with him. Against her will, or with her consent? I couldn’t know.

  Heartsick, I headed to Ray’s.

  In his driveway, I found a Beauville Police patrol car and Barrett’s red Dodge Ram. Panic propelled me from my SUV. Barrett met me at the bungalow’s front door.

  “Is it Corinne?” I demanded. “Is she all right?”

  “She hasn’t turned up,” Barrett replied. He’d traded his uniform for jeans, a forest-green T-shirt, and a navy half-zip fleece. And he kept his voice to a low rumble so he wouldn’t be overheard by the visitors in Ray’s living room. “With the Lady Luck’s bomber dead, I’m off the task force. April and half a dozen other agencies are after Nevis now. But I remembered you said Eddie had a history with Ray. I brought a couple of guys from Beauville PD to follow up, and find out about Eddie’s recent past if we can.”

  I nodded, preceded Barrett into the living room. There was Ray, ensconced in his big, blue chair. He had an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth, a rust-red blanket covering his knees, and a face as sad as a horse’s who’d spent an unsuccessful day at the races.

  When he saw me, Ray held out a hand to me. “Tell ’em, kid. Tell ’em Eddie has never been the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  I clasped Ray’s paw in mine and perched on the arm of his chair. “One would hope he got smarter over the years.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” Ray groused.

  The police, in the form of a uniformed cop and two detectives in sports coats and ties, turned their attention to questioning me. I couldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. I’d helped to bust Eddie fifteen years ago and that was the end of my story.

  “But there’s one more thing I learned, today.”

  I reminded them that Dr. Vickers suspected a .38 had killed Eddie Jepson.

  And I explained I’d seen a Chief’s Special in Bran Laurent’s apartment.

  “The gun’s gone now,” I told them. “And so is Bran Laurent.”

  Ray’s grip tightened on mine.

  “Too smart,” he murmured. “Way too smart.”

  “Bran?” the senior detective asked. “I take it that’s a nickname.”

  “It’s short for Brandon,” Ray said. “But everyone seems to know him as Bran.”

  Everyone, I thought, except Monique Wells.

  Unless I missed my guess, Monique truly hadn’t known Bran’s name at all. Hunch Nevis had never mentioned Bran, either, though he’d been happy to flaunt Corinne’s full name in front of me as well as my own. Apparently, my alias hadn’t kept him busy very long.

  My alias…

  “I have to go,” I announced, startling the men in Ray’s living room. And though he wouldn’t appreciate my doing so, I brushed a kiss across his forehead. “I’ll have news soon. I promise.”

  I didn’t wait for Ray to catch my meaning. I bolted from the house. Barrett caught up with me in the drive.

  He said, “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  “No.”

  I wrenched open the door of my Escalade.

  Barrett slammed it shut.

  “Jamie, don’t leave me hanging here.”

  I closed my eyes and drew a soft breath. Because Barrett was right. I shouldn’t leave him hanging.

  I said, “Ray taught me everything I know about being a private eye. And Corinne, as Ray’s bookkeeper, had a front-row seat every time school was in session.”

  “I don’t follow…”

  “Ray taught me to cover my tracks. And sometimes, covering my tracks means giving a false name.”

  Barrett crossed his arms against his chest. “Honey, if you’re going to tell me you’re not really Jamie Sinclair—”

  “Barrett, what if Corinne wasn’t kidnapped? What if she ran away? What if she’s holed up in a motel somewhere under a false name?”

  With that theory, I won Barrett over to my way of thinking. Despite the deepening dusk, I could see my victory in the sparkle of his chocolate-brown eye. And I heard it when he began to play devil’s advocate.

  “Why would Corinne use an alias?”

  “Because Hunch Nevis knows her real name? He told me so himself. Because he’s after her for some reason? He said if he had her, he’d trade her for something else. Because Bran’s dangerous and she’s afraid of him? I don’t know. But I don’t think she was abducted. I think she’s in hiding.”

  Barrett glanced over his shoulder at the cops emerging from Ray’s bungalow. He could’ve called them over. He could’ve told them everything I’d just told him. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. Instead, he yanked open the driver’s door of my SUV and held it for me while I hopped inside.

  “Well, if Corinne’s in hiding,” Barrett said, “we’d better go help her out.”

  Chapter 35

  The stroke of 1 A.M. caught me in the parking lot of the Bide-a-Wee Inn, a tiny motel down the road from Beauville, in the picturesque town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I’d maneuvered my massive SUV beneath the spreading arms of a live oak at the far edge of the lot, let the night shadows and Spanish moss cloak me. And then I’d settled in to wait.

  Barrett and I had no assurance that Corinne had booked a room here, but between us, we’d phoned nearly every hotel, motel, and bed-and-breakfast within a thirty-mile radius of the Walther house. And the Bi
de-a-Wee Inn had been the only establishment that offered to connect me to Charlotte Lucas’s room. Charlotte Lucas, a beleaguered old maid though still in her twenties, had been one of Corinne’s favorite literary characters since her own old-fashioned mother had badgered her about getting married from the day she’d turned eighteen. I’d seen the novel featuring Charlotte Lucas in the bookcase beneath Corinne’s bedroom window, and I figured if Corinne was indeed using an alias, Charlotte Lucas would be it. But I’d hung up before the connection had gone through.

  Only three of the Bide-a-Wee’s eight rooms appeared to be occupied, judging by the lights that set their closed curtains aglow. The rooms were arranged in a straight line directly behind the office, and each one opened onto a dormant garden and the parking lot. An ice machine lived in a cubby at the end of the complex. Barrett and I had ruled out Room 2 as Corinne’s hideout when we observed a portly gentleman emerge from that room with an ice bucket under his arm. But if we’d assumed wrong, or if Corinne had already gone lights out, we could be making a grave error.

  I crushed that idea as I watched the shadows morph across the walls of the inn. The security specialist in me thought the place needed some LED landscape lights to throw blue hotspots at every door and window and banish natural hiding places, but without the lights, the conditions were right for a little reconnaissance. And when the passenger door of my SUV whipped open, my scout, Barrett himself, slipped into the seat with his report.

  “She might be in Number Five,” he told me. “The drapes were drawn tight, but I think I heard a cooking show on the TV.”

  I nodded in the dark. All night, I’d rehearsed what I would say when I confronted Corinne. But now that the moment had come, words escaped me.

  “We’ll need backup,” Barrett said, “in case she’s not alone.”

  “No!” The syllable came out harder than I’d intended. “A carload of cops will spook her for sure, and if Bran’s with her—”