Carrie serves them all; knows them all. Not on a first-name basis, but by type and, often, by ship. Sure, some crowds of passengers are interchangeable—on, say, Tuesday, when megaships from Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Princess are simultaneously in port. They all cater to middle-class Americans—families, retirees, and honeymooners alike.
But today is Thursday. Three different cruise lines; three distinctly different crowds.
“Which ship are you on,” Carrie asks, “the Carousel?”
Molly raises an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”
Easy. It’s a singles cruise out of Miami. There are two others in port for the day, but one is a Disney ship favored almost exclusively by families with young children; the other, a small luxury line popular with wealthy South American couples.
This woman is definitely single, U.S. born and bred. . . . and U.S. bound, or so Molly thinks. Little does she suspect that if all goes according to Carrie’s plan, the Carousel will be setting sail in a little over an hour, at five o’clock sharp, without her.
“How’d I know? Lucky guess.” Carrie shrugs. “Like I said, I’ve been working here long enough. ”
“It must be hard to be inside on the job when it’s always so beautiful out there.”
“Sometimes.” Much easier to agree than to explain that she prefers it this way.
Carrie’s never been an outdoorsy girl—not by choice, anyway. After all those childhood summers working the fields in the glaring, burning sun of the Great Plains, she welcomed the architecture-shaded canyons of Manhattan. And yes, she had regretted having to leave New York behind so soon. Given proper time to plan her exit strategy a decade ago, she’d have opted for a fog-shrouded city like London or San Francisco, or perhaps rainy Seattle or Portland . . .
But at the time, her objective was to get out quickly--in the immediate aftermath of September 11, no less, when public transportation was at an inconvenient standstill. Had she been trying to enter the U.S., she’d have been out of luck, given the sudden, intense border scrutiny on incoming travelers.
But she only wanted to leave—and hitchhiking was the only way to go, from truck stop to truck stop, down the East Coast. Riding high in the cabs of eighteen-wheelers along an endless gray ribbon of interstate brought back a lot of memories. Good ones, mostly.
As she made her way to Florida, she perfected her cover story: she was supposed to meet her terminally ill fiancé in the Caribbean to marry him that Saturday.
People were in a shell-shocked, help-your-fellow-American mode. Every time she mentioned that she’d escaped the burning towers in New York, strangers bent over backward to help, giving her rides, food, money.
Eventually, she encountered a perpetually stoned, sympathetic trucker who was more than happy to connect her with a man who was willing to help her complete her so-called wedding journey. For a steep price—one she could easily afford, thanks to years of stockpiling cash—she was quite literally able to sail away on a little boat regularly used for smuggling illegal substances into the country, as opposed to smuggling people out of it.
She’d chosen Saint Antony for its relatively close proximity to the United States and for its unofficial look-the-other-way policies when it comes to just about everything. She figured she’d stay a while—six months, a year, maybe two—and then move on. Once she was here, however, complicated post–9/11 security measures made it a challenge to return to the States.
She could have gone elsewhere—Europe, maybe, or the South Pacific—but she wasn’t really interested in doing that. America was home, and someday, she might want to go back.
As always, she’d done her homework and figured out how she would eventually be able to get around the new security obstacles. She came up with the perfect plan, but she wasn’t in any hurry to put it into action. Maybe she’d stay here forever. Maybe not. It was just good to know she could escape if she wanted—or needed—to.
She didn’t, until the morning six months ago when she turned on her television and was blindsided by her own face staring back at her. There she was, in an old photograph that accompanied a news report from suburban New York.
“So do you like bartending?” the woman at the bar, Molly, asks her. “I bet you meet a lot of interesting people.”
“Sure do,” Carrie agrees, but of course that’s another lie.
These people don’t interest her. At times, they just bore or frustrate her, but mostly, they merely remind her that there’s a world beyond this island. A world Carrie is ready to rejoin at last.
A generous shot of rum splashes into the blender, and then another for good measure, along with ice, mixer—and the powdered contents of a packet Carrie surreptitiously pulls from her pocket, where it’s been waiting for months now. Waiting for just the right opportunity . . .
This is it.
Carrie reaches for the blender switch. It’s sticky; everything here in the bar—and everyone, for that matter—is sticky, and damp.
Oh, it’s going to feel so good to escape the looming Caribbean summer, with its oppressive humidity, daily rainstorms, and hurricanes lining up out in the Atlantic like steel balls in a pinball shoot. Disembarking in the States tomorrow morning—yes, even Miami—will be a literal breath of fresh air.
Her stomach fluttering with excitement at the thought of it, Carrie flips the gummy switch. The contents of the blender erupt, sucking the white powder into a frothy vortex. Carrie lets it whirl for at least thirty seconds before filling the waiting glass with frozen slush the color of the Caribbean sky at dusk—her favorite time of day.
I’m probably going to miss those sunsets, if nothing else, she acknowledges. But I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.
She’s spent more than ten years in this barefoot, rum-and-ganja-laced, easy-living part of the world, where no one bats an eye or asks too many questions of a newcomer. Ironic, Carrie has always thought, that countless people come to the sunny Caribbean to slip into the shadows. Here, they can escape their past; maybe—if they’re lucky—erase it altogether.
But last November, when Carrie saw her own face in that news report about her ex-husband and his new wife, she was swept by a fierce, unexpected wave of emotion. Resentment swirled up from the murky depths of her memory, churning renewed frustration and rage.
It’s been six months since that day. Six months of planning and plotting. Six months of growing obsession, just like before—years ago, when she was little more than a girl and developed the fixation that would consume her life.
I couldn’t help it then, and I can’t help it now.
It’s time to go home, confront the past, battle the demons she’d left behind. Time to make things right at last, the way she couldn’t the first time she’d tried, because something got in the way: an unexpected yearning for a so-called normal life, a glimmer of hope that she might somehow achieve it.
I should have known better.
Ah, but she did know better.
Maybe you were right after all, Daddy. Maybe I knew much more than I thought. But she’d gotten sidetracked, caught up in desire. She’d been foolish. Human.
And now?
What am I now, all these years later?
Inhuman?
Adding a straw and the obligatory paper umbrella to the doctored rum runner, Carrie smiles, certain that her plan is going to work.
I thought the same thing the last couple of times, and I was wrong.
The first candidate she’d found, about two months ago, hadn’t been alone after all. That was a close call. Before the female tourist Carrie had selected could lift her doctored daiquiri to her lips, a pair of friends—the woman’s roommates on the Carousel, it turned out—burst into the bar to join her, toting bags from a souvenir shop down the street.
Carrie managed to accidentally-on-purpose knock over the glass, spilling the drug-laced slush all over the bar. She made the woman a fresh drink on the house, along with two more for her friends, and when the Carousel set sail, the tipsy thr
eesome were all aboard.
A few weeks later, she saw her chance again.
Another solo woman at the bar, one who bore enough of a resemblance to Carrie that it just might be possible. Her name was Beth and she was the chatty type. She had just survived an ugly divorce, she said, with no children, and was on her cruise to celebrate leaving behind her old life in rural Maine to start fresh in New Orleans, where she didn’t know a soul.
Perfect, Carrie thought. But this time, before she could reach into her pocket to add the powder to the frozen piña colada she was mixing, Jimmy Bolt, the Big Iguana’s owner, materialized.
“Hey, Jane,” he said, “I need you to stay on till closing tonight, okay?”
Of course she said yes. You don’t mess with Jimmy. Ever. About anything.
She learned that years ago, not long after she came to work for him and foolishly—fleetingly—got caught up in his charismatic web.
Theirs wasn’t a full-blown affair, by any means. It lasted only a couple of months. She told him nothing about herself; asked nothing about him in return. She knew he was married, one of the most powerful men on the island, and had his share of shady connections, not to mention plenty of enemies—a fact Carrie is actually counting on now.
On the day Beth from rural Maine crossed Carrie’s path, Jimmy stuck around just long enough for her to change her mind about the second piña colada.
“I think I’m going to go hit the casino back on the ship,” she told Carrie as she left. “I’m feeling lucky today.”
You have no idea how lucky you are, Carrie thought, and that night, instead of sailing away in Beth’s cabin, Carrie was mopping someone’s vomit from the bar floor at closing.
Really, that was okay. Patience is a virtue—one that was uncharacteristically in short supply when she was living in New York as Carrie Robinson MacKenna a decade ago. But that was due, in part, to the hormonal injections when she and Mack were trying to conceive.
Thank goodness she’s long-since gotten back to her methodical old self.
“Here you go.” She slides the drink across the bar to Molly. “I just need to see your ship ID.”
“Oh. Right.” Molly reaches into her large straw tote and pulls out a plastic card dangling from a lanyard patterned in the Carousel’s signature purple and gold colors.
Carrie takes the card from her and glances at it as Molly sips from the straw.
Along with the name of the ship and the embedded code that will be scanned for re-boarding, the card bears passenger’s name, Molly Temple, her disembark date—tomorrow—and her lifeboat assembly station.
“Great, I just need your cabin number,” Carrie tells her easily, then holds her breath, praying the generous rum in the first drink—and the first couple of sips Molly’s taken from this one—impaired her better judgment.
Yep:
“It’s 10533,” Molly tells her, thus confirming—as Carrie had already suspected—that she’s staying in one of the ship’s new studio rooms—tiny inside cabins that accommodate just one passenger. No frills. No roommates.
No problem, mon, as they like to say here in the islands that are soon to become mere specks on the horizon in the Carousel’s wake.
“Oooh, I love your bracelet.” Molly has caught sight of the unusual silver and blue bangle on Carrie’s wrist, a constant source of compliments. “Is that topaz?”
“Larimar. It’s a Caribbean gemstone.”
“It’s beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. Where did you get it?”
“Punta Cana.”
She’d visited only once, recklessly daring to leave this island on a clandestine private yacht trip with Jimmy at the height of their affair. The vendor who sold her the bracelet had assured her that it was real larimar, not the plastic imitations that are rampant in tourist traps. He used a lighter to prove it, holding a flame to the stone to show her how durable it was.
“The real thing won’t melt,” he told Carrie, “or burn. The real thing, you can’t destroy.”
She liked that.
She bought it.
She wears it every day.
If Jimmy ever noticed, he probably thinks that’s because it’s a treasured memento of their time together. It isn’t. For Carrie, it’s a reminder that some things in this ever-precarious world can’t be destroyed.
“I’d love to bring a bracelet like that back for my mom,” Molly tells Carrie. “She just lost my dad a few months ago, and I’ve been looking for a souvenir for her. Where is Punta Cana? Is that one of the shops down the road?”
The woman’s stupidity makes it even easier for Carrie to silently rationalize what’s going to happen to her as she says aloud, “No, it’s a different island. It’s a city in the Dominican Republic. That’s the only place you can find larimar in the whole world.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“I’m sure you’ll go someday.” The lies spill so easily off Carrie’s tongue. They always have.
“I hope so,” Molly tells her. “Oh, well. Maybe I can find something for my mom in the jewelry store on the Carousel. Anyway, thanks for the drink.”
“You’re welcome. Enjoy.” Smiling, Carrie hands back the ship ID card—for now.
And see where the terror began in
NIGHTWATCHER,
available now from
New York Times bestselling author
Wendy Corsi Staub
September 10, 2001
Quantico, Virginia
6:35 P.M.
Case closed.
Vic Shattuck clicks the mouse, and the Southside Strangler file—the one that forced him to spend the better part of August in the rainy Midwest, tracking a serial killer—disappears from the screen.
If only it were that easy to make it all go away in real life.
“If you let it, this stuff will eat you up inside like cancer,” Vic’s FBI colleague Dave Gudlaug told him early in his career, and he was right.
Now Dave, who a few years ago reached the bureau’s mandatory retirement age, spends his time traveling with his wife. He claims he doesn’t miss the work.
“Believe me, you’ll be ready to put it all behind you, too, when the time comes,” he promised Vic.
Maybe, but with his own retirement seven years away, Vic is in no hurry to move on. Sure, it might be nice to spend uninterrupted days and nights with Kitty, but somehow, he suspects that he’ll never be truly free of the cases he’s handled—not even those that are solved. For now, as a profiler with the Behavioral Science Unit, he can at least do his part to rid the world of violent offenders.
“You’re still here, Shattuck?”
He looks up to see Special Agent Annabelle Wyatt. With her long legs, almond-shaped dark eyes, and flawless ebony skin, she looks like a supermodel—and acts like one of the guys.
Not in a let’s-hang-out-and-have-a-few-laughs way; in a let’s-cut-the-bullshit-and-get-down-to-business way.
She briskly hands Vic a folder. “Take a look at this and let me know what you think.”
“Now?”
She clears her throat. “It’s not urgent, but . . .”
Yeah, right. With Annabelle, everything is urgent.
“Unless you were leaving . . .” She pauses, obviously waiting for him to tell her that he’ll take care of it before he goes.
“I was.”
Without even glancing at the file, Vic puts it on top of his in-box. The day’s been long enough and he’s more than ready to head home.
Kitty is out at her book club tonight, but that’s okay with him. She called earlier to say she was leaving a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. The homemade kind, with melted cheddar and buttery breadcrumb topping.
Better yet, both his favorite hometown teams—the New York Yankees and the New York Giants—are playing tonight. Vic can hardly wait to hit the couch with a fork in one hand and the TV remote control in the other.
“All right, then.” Annabelle turns to leave, then turns bac
k. “Oh, I heard about Chicago. Nice work. You got him.”
“You mean her.”
Annabelle shrugs. “How about it?”
“It. Yeah, that works.”
Over the course of Vic’s career, he hasn’t seen many true cases of MPD—multiple personality disorder—but this was one of them.
The elusive Southside Strangler turned out to be a woman named Edie . . . who happened to live inside a suburban single dad named Calvin Granger.
Last June, Granger had helplessly watched his young daughter drown in a fierce Lake Michigan undertow. Unable to swim, he was incapable of saving her.
Weeks later, mired in frustration and anguish and the brunt of his grieving ex-wife’s fury, he picked up a hooker. That was not unusual behavior for him. What happened after that was.
The woman’s nude, mutilated body was found just after dawn in Washington Park, electrical cable wrapped around her neck. A few days later, another corpse turned up in the park. And then a third.
Streetwalking and violent crime go hand in hand; the Southside’s slain hookers were, sadly, business as usual for the jaded cops assigned to that particular case.
For urban reporters, as well. Chicago was in the midst of a series of flash floods this summer; the historic weather eclipsed the coverage of the Southside Strangler in the local press. That, in retrospect, was probably a very good thing. The media spotlight tends to feed a killer’s ego—and his bloodlust.
Only when the Strangler claimed a fourth victim—an upper-middle-class mother of three living a respectable lifestyle—did the case become front-page news. That was when the cops called in the FBI.
For Vic, every lost life carries equal weight. His heart went out to the distraught parents he met in Chicago, parents who lost their daughters twice: first to drugs and the streets, and ultimately to the monster who murdered them.
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