Once Shunned

by Blake Pierce

  She gasped a little and said to Bill and Jenn …

  “Wesley Mannis didn’t kill this man.”

  “How do you know?” Jenn asked.

  Riley was about to explain that Wesley making eye contact with Dr. Bayle had been very unusual and a sign of progress in his therapy. Under ordinary circumstances, Wesley just wouldn’t be capable of staring directly into another person’s eyes.

  But then she heard Agent Sturman’s voice.

  “I’ve got some news. And you’re not going to like it.”

  Riley turned and saw Sturman holding his cell phone.

  “There’s been another ice pick murder,” Sturman said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Riley and her colleagues exchanged grim glances.

  Sturman had just announced the worst possible news they could hear right now.

  Another ice pick murder!

  Another person dead.

  She knew that she, Bill, and Jenn were all thinking the same thing. This meant that their investigation was desperately behind.

  How many more deaths might follow before they solved this case?

  Sturman said, “We’ve got to go right now. We’ve got to get there before the tide comes in.”

  The tide? Riley wondered.

  As they headed back along the path toward the park’s front entrance, Sturman explained, “That was the state medical examiner, Alex Kinkaid. Another body was found over on the Wickenburg Reef. He and his team are at the crime scene now.”

  Bill said, “Is the body still there?”

  Their pace quickened as Sturman replied, “Yes, and I told him not to move it. But we don’t have much time. When the tide gets too high, Kinkaid and his team will have to take the body away whether we’re there yet or not. That’s all I know myself. I didn’t have time to ask questions.”

  Riley and her colleagues got into their borrowed car and followed along behind Sturman’s vehicle.

  As Bill drove, Jenn called Wilburton House to check on Wesley Mannis’s whereabouts. When she ended the call she said, “The staff says Wesley’s still in his room recovering from his meltdown.”

  Then with a sigh Jenn added, “I guess that’s puts an end to my suspicions about him. I feel stupid for bringing it up. Next time I get a crazy hypothesis like that, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Riley said, “Don’t you dare, Jenn. We’ve got to entertain any and all ideas, even crazy ones. The way things are shaping up, my guess is that the truth is going to turn out to seem plenty crazy when we get this case solved.”

  Riley stopped herself from adding …

  “If we can solve it.”

  Failure wasn’t an option, after all—especially now that there had been another victim. There was no reason to believe that this killer would to stop soon.

  It was only a short drive west from New Haven to Wickenburg, a town right on the coast of the Long Island Sound. A quaint Colonial town like Wilburton, Wickenburg had a picturesque village green with a hexagonal gazebo that looked well-suited for dancing and musical ensembles.

  The Fourth of July must get really lively here, Riley thought.

  They followed Sturman through the little town to the beach, where several official vehicles had parked. She saw the medical examiner’s van among them.

  Jutting out from the shore, a curving row of enormous rocks protruded from the surf. Beyond the rocks a little lighthouse stood on a tiny isolated island.

  They got out of their car and joined Agent Sturman, who was approaching a man in a police uniform and an official in a white jacket.

  Introductions were exchanged. The two men were Terry Nilson, Wickenburg’s chief of police, and Alex Kinkaid, the state medical examiner. The ME was an enormous man with a walrus-style mustache.

  In a rough but almost cheerful voice, Kinkaid said, “Definitely looks like a serial killer, doesn’t it? And I was thinking about retiring this year. I might have to think better of it if things stay this interesting.”

  By contrast, Chief Nilson looked badly shaken. He appeared to be much younger than the ME, and Riley guessed that he’d never dealt with anything this grim before.

  Nilson and Kinkaid led Riley and her colleagues out onto the long, rocky reef. Kinkaid struck Riley as remarkably spry for a man his size, while Nilson negotiated the boulders with considerable caution.

  So did Riley and her colleagues. The rocks were treacherous and slippery, and although the waves weren’t nearly as high as they would be out on the ocean, they were pounding hard against the reef.

  A handful of cops and the ME’s team were gathered at the far end of the reef, surrounding a body that lay crumpled on a boulder. The dead man was facing to his left, his right hand extended toward a fishing rod that was wedged between a couple of rocks.

  It looked to Riley like the rod must have flown out of his hands at the moment of the attack.

  Chief Nilson said, “This is Ron Donovan, poor guy. He was a widower who owned a gift shop here in Wickenburg. He’d come out here to fish early mornings whenever he could. This morning he must have come out here shortly before dawn, when the tide was just starting go out.”

  Riley could see that the tide was definitely coming back in now, and the surf raised a mist in the air. She guessed that only a few minutes remained before the ME’s team had to move Ron Donovan’s body and his fishing gear before they were submerged or floated away.

  Riley peered down at the body. The man didn’t appear to be very old—maybe only fifty or so. His open eyes stared out over the water.

  Bill asked, “Who found the body?”

  Chief Nilson explained, “A couple of Ron’s fishing buddies came out to join him and found him like this. Ron had a heart condition, so naturally they thought he’d died from a heart attack. They called nine-one-one, and an ambulance came with some paramedics.”

  Jenn asked, “Why did anyone guess it might be murder?”

  Kinkaid said with a grunt of self-satisfaction, “I can take some credit for that. Of course, it’s not public knowledge that Robin Scoville was killed with an ice pick—or that Vincent Cranston was murdered at all. We’re trying to keep a lid on all that so the media doesn’t go crazy about it. Still, I put out an APB to the appropriate medical personnel to keep a lookout for certain kinds of deaths—especially ones that involved bleeding from the ear.”

  The big man stooped down and pointed. Ron Donovan’s left ear was pooled with thick, dark blood.

  Kinkaid said, “Sure enough, this guy did not die of a heart attack. The paramedics called my office right away. My team and I got over here as soon as we could. Then I called Chief Sturman, and he brought you folks over here.”

  Riley looked all around, trying to assess her situation. Normally, a fresh crime scene like this would give her the perfect opportunity to try to get into a killer’s mind. But the tide was already visibly higher than it had been when they got here. Riley knew she’d have to work fast.

  Pointing to the dead fisherman’s plastic bucket, she asked the police chief …

  “How was his catch this morning?”

  For a moment Chief Nilson looked surprised by the question. Riley knew it must seem odd that she’d be interested in such a seemingly irrelevant detail. But then he opened the lid and peered inside.

  He said, “It looks like Ron caught five good-sized bluefish. He’d have been pretty happy with this.”

  Riley nodded, then retraced her steps some thirty feet back along the reef. Then she turned back around and looked out toward the end of the reef, trying to imagine the scene shortly before dawn when the tide was going out and the light sparkled from the east over the waves.

  The killer would have seen Ron Donovan standing out there casting his line out into the water. She wondered …

  Did the killer know him?

  Had he chosen him as a victim before he’d even come here?

  Riley had no way of knowing.

  Even so, she tried to imagine herself in the killer’
s shoes as she made her way back out over the reef.

  She asked herself another question …

  Did he call out to Ron Donovan as he approached?

  Had Donovan then turned and given him a welcoming wave?

  She couldn’t be sure, but she somehow doubted it. With the sounds of waves and crying gulls, it was easy to imagine the killer coming all the way out onto the reef without Ron Donovan even noticing him. And the killer might have wanted it that way.

  Finally she arrived at the spot where Donovan had been fishing.

  What happened here? she wondered.

  She remembered the gut feeling she’d had back in Robin Scoville’s house—that the woman had been struck with the ice pick before she’d even been aware of an intruder.

  Had something like that happened here?

  Riley looked down at the body again, trying to determine how the victim would have crumpled into this particular position as he fell dead.

  She quickly realized …

  Donovan was sitting down when he was attacked.

  She didn’t know much about surf fishing, but she did know that it was done from a standing position, just like the fly fishing she’d done with her father back in the Virginia mountains.

  So he sat down when the killer arrived.

  A hypothetical but remarkably vivid scenario began to play out in her mind.

  Feeling prepared and ready for this new murder, the killer speaks to the angler when he gets directly behind him …

  “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day, doesn’t it?”

  The angler turns around with surprise as he winds his line back in from his previous cast.

  The two men don’t know each other. The killer figures the angler takes him for a tourist who is staying here in Wickenburg. The killer notices an irritated expression on the angler’s face, and he guesses he’s about to tell him to be on his way and leave him alone.

  But the killer speaks before the fisherman gets a chance.

  “How’s the fishing this morning?”

  The fisherman smiles, apparently pleased by the question.

  “Have a look in the bucket yourself,” he says.

  The killer lifts the lid off the bucket and sees five large fish.

  “Looks impressive,” the killer says. “What kind of fish are these?”

  “Bluefish,” the angler says, sitting down on the rock. “Sit down with me, I’ll show you the lures I’ve been using.”

  The killer sits down beside the man, pleased that things are going so well.

  They chat pleasantly for a moment. The angler clearly enjoys showing off his equipment, talking about surf fishing to someone who doesn’t know anything about it. Meanwhile, the killer fingers the handle of his concealed ice pick, waiting for the perfect moment to attack.

  Then the killer points beyond the reef and says …

  “That’s a nice lighthouse. How long has it been there?”

  The fisherman looks where he’s pointing and nods. He opens his mouth to say something about the lighthouse’s history.

  But he doesn’t get a chance to speak, because this is the moment the killer has been waiting for.

  He lifts his ice pick and drives it into the fisherman’s ear …

  Riley shuddered as she snapped out of her reverie.

  This time her sense of the killer was unusually vivid.

  She had to steady herself a little and remind herself …

  It’s just conjecture.

  As vivid as the scenario had seemed, she knew it was all nothing more than intuitive guesswork, especially details of the conversation. For all she really knew, Donovan and the killer hadn’t spoken to each other at all. But that didn’t strike her as likely. After all, Donovan had been sitting down at the moment of his death, which suggested that he had found the encounter to be relaxed and amiable—at least at first.

  She felt pretty sure that she’d gotten some bits of the scene right.

  She heard Bill ask her …

  “So what do you think?”

  As Riley turned toward him, she saw that all the others except Bill and Jenn were staring at her with mystified surprise.

  This again, she thought.

  As so often happened, those who weren’t accustomed to her strange, trancelike behavior didn’t know what to make of it.

  Riley stifled a sigh. She didn’t want to explain it right now.

  Riley replied to Bill’s question with one guess she felt pretty sure of …

  “I don’t think Donovan knew the killer personally.”

  Jenn asked, “Anything else?”

  As Riley tried to think of something else to say, she looked down again at the body. The tide would be lapping against it any minute now. And was that a bit of seaweed draped over the back of his right hand?

  She stooped down and looked closely at the hand and saw that it wasn’t seaweed. It was a blotch on the skin itself. She pulled up the sleeve a little and saw that the blotch spread up onto the victim’s wrist.

  She pointed to it and asked Kinkaid, “What do you think this is?”

  The big medical examiner stooped down beside her and said, “I noticed it earlier. It’s just a birthmark. Nothing to worry about. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Anyway, we’ve got to get this guy out of here.”

  As Kinkaid gave orders for his team to remove the body, Riley saw Agent Sturman looking at his cell phone.

  “I just got a message from my team in New Haven,” he said to Riley and her colleagues. “They’ve been trying to track down people who’ve bought ice picks recently, and three names caught their attention. They don’t look very promising to me, though. We can deal with them later.”

  Sturman pocketed his phone and added, “Niles Cranston’s been waiting for us to come to his mansion and give him an update. I was hoping we could report something positive. He’s sure as hell not going to be pleased to hear there’s another murder.”

  Bill said to Sturman, “We’ll follow your car to his place.”

  As Riley and her colleagues got into their borrowed vehicle, the image of that birthmark flashed through her mind, and she remembered the ME had just said …

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

  Riley felt a tingle of anxiety as she thought …

  Why do I get the feeling that’s not true?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As Bill began to drive, following along behind Agent Sturman’s car, Riley sat staring out the passenger window. Even as she watched the reef slip behind them, she couldn’t get another image out of her head.

  That birthmark.

  The dark shape on the back of the victim’s hand and wrist kept flashing in her mind like an afterimage from a bright burst of light. She didn’t know why it nagged at her so.

  She said to Bill and Jenn, “Were either of you bothered by Ron Donovan’s birthmark?”

  Her colleagues both glanced at her with surprise.

  Jenn said, “No, why?”

  Riley shook her head. “I don’t know. It just concerns me somehow.”

  Bill scoffed slightly and said, “I can’t imagine why. It’s like the ME said, it doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

  Jenn added, “It’s not like it was a wound inflicted at time of the murder. He’d had it all his life. Unless you think the ME was wrong, and it wasn’t really a birthmark. But what else could it be? What could have caused it right then and there?”

  Riley said, “I’m sure it is a birthmark, but …”

  Her voice faded away for a moment.

  Then she said, “Robin Scoville was an amputee.”

  “So?” Jenn said.

  “So,” Riley said, “both Robin and Ron were … imperfect.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Bill said.

  Riley didn’t reply. The truth was, she wasn’t sure she did either. But she felt as though she’d gotten into the killer’s head pretty vividly just now. And for so
me reason, she thought those two imperfections had mattered to him somehow.

  Bill said, “They’re nothing alike, Riley—a birthmark and an amputated leg, I mean. They just don’t compare.”

  “And what about Vincent Cranston?” Jenn asked. “He was training to be a marathon runner. Judging from the crime scene photos, he looked pretty much perfect.”

  Riley stifled a sigh. She couldn’t explain her feeling to Bill and Jenn. And it didn’t really make sense, not even to herself. Anyway, she knew that Jenn was right. Riley had noticed nothing odd about the photos of Vincent Cranston except for that very slight but peculiar expression on his face. And of course, that had surely been the result of Vincent’s surprise at suddenly being attacked. Otherwise, he’d looked like a healthy and remarkably handsome young man.

  Just try to put it out of your mind, Riley told herself.

  Not that she figured that was going to be easy to do. Once a glimmer of an idea got stuck in her head, Riley could rarely shake it off.

  Still, she had other things to think about at the moment. For one thing, she wondered what Niles Cranston was going to be like.

  The Cranston family had been famous since the nineteenth-century days of robber barons. They were part of American history. The first millionaires of that name had been well known for their philanthropy, a tradition their descendants upheld even today.

  Nevertheless, the heirs to the family fortune were notoriously reclusive. Riley couldn’t remember ever seeing photographs of any of them. She had no idea what to expect from Niles Cranston beyond what Agent Sturman had told her yesterday.

  “He’s really been leaning on us to solve the case.”

  Riley knew from experience that millionaires could be troublesome when it came to solving cases. Would Niles Cranston be any different?

  Bill followed Agent Sturman’s car back through New Haven, then farther east to the town of Levering. On the far edge of the picturesque and definitely upscale little town they arrived at the Cranston estate. They followed Agent Sturman to the front gate, where Sturman identified himself to a guard who admitted them into the grounds.

  At first, Riley saw no sign of any houses or buildings as the vehicles wended their way along the curving road among several acres of tall, leafy trees. Finally, the Cranston family home came suddenly into view.