Lighthouse Reef (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 4)

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Same here,” Logan said after closing Megan’s file. He looked over at Ethan. “Megan’s case is as lacking as the others. There’s the missing persons report filed by my grandparents. Attached to what amounts to three pages of notes from a Detective Augustine that lists who he interviewed at the time. There are about twenty people here. And that’s it.”

  “That sounds about right. Not much was done about these cases back then, Logan. I told you that the first time we traded emails. Not one member of law enforcement thought these cases were even connected. No one put it together.”

  “Well, that much hasn’t changed. Has it?” Logan grumbled. “They still don’t.”

  Kinsey grabbed another file. This one was a little thicker. She thumbed through it telling Logan, “This one belongs to Ian Radigan’s sister, Carly, the one who went missing twenty-five years ago on a chilly March evening as she hitchhiked down to Hollywood from Portland, Oregon. Hollywood? My God, don’t these girls realize that’s not a good idea. There are a lot of dangerous miles to travel from Oregon to Los Angeles on foot. The detective on her case was someone named Don Figueroa, who writes that witnesses reported seeing a young blonde matching Carly’s description on the shoulder of the 101 the evening of March 20th at approximately seven-thirty. Many remembered the time because they said a rain shower moved through the area. There were at least a dozen other motorists that said they saw a maroon pickup stop and offer her a ride. Well, this is a first. Figueroa considered Carly abducted and believed the girl was likely taken right there from the side of the road when she crawled into that vehicle.”

  Kinsey put down the file. “Whatever and wherever it happened, we certainly know Carly accepted a ride from the wrong man. And it occurred only five miles outside of Pelican Pointe, Ethan.”

  “There’s a definite pattern. I don’t think ten girls go missing within a fifteen-square-mile radius of Pelican Pointe and it’s a coincidence.” Ethan took out a map from the kitchen drawer, unfolded it and spread it out on the table. “Last night Brent and I sat right here and came up with this. The red Xs indicate where five were last seen. That’s north and south of Pelican Pointe, up and down the 101 and west to the Coast Highway.”

  “The sad thing is there are no bodies, no crime scene photos. Essentially we have nothing,” Logan lamented. He studied the chart before he said, “How do you find a serial killer when we have no DNA, no fingerprints, basically nothing?”

  “You start digging with what you do have. I’d say it has to start at ground zero at the beginning,” Kinsey said matter-of-factly indicating the files on the table. She began to pick up one folder and then another jotting down notes on a legal pad as she went. “We comb over these witness reports, go through the lists of people the various detectives interviewed. We compare our findings. Maybe something here, any little tidbit we can glean, will click and jump out at us. First up, we determine if the people that top our suspect list, like the Turley brothers or the Stovall brothers, are mentioned in these reports. If they aren’t, fine, we move on. Doesn’t mean we exclude them, far from it. But we don’t waste our time on supposition. Right now, we need facts. And like it or not, these police reports are all we have at the moment.”

  “She’s right,” Logan said as he took a seat at the table. “If we split up the files, it’ll go faster.”

  Two and a half hours later, each of them had made a lengthy list, which they compared to each other’s. “Three of the girls were hitchhiking the 101. One was headed north, the other two going south, presumably to Los Angeles. Three of them were driving their own cars through Pelican Pointe when they experienced car trouble. The cops found their cars disabled on the highway. They had reportedly stopped for gas earlier at Pierce’s Service Station, which is now Wally’s Pump N Go.”

  “Which means they came in contact with the owner, Wally’s father, Jimmy. Jimmy Pierce is added to the suspect list,” Ethan said.

  “Exactly,” Kinsey agreed. “But I’m glad Wally isn’t here to witness this.”

  “But if we’re thorough, we can’t be influenced by outside feedback. From here on out, we include everyone mentioned in the reports regardless of status. And at this point it could be anyone,” Logan pointed out.

  Kinsey gnawed her lip before reluctantly nodding in agreement. “Reading the reports, of those three girls who had vehicles, the cops at the time thought their cars had been tampered with, disabled by putting sand in the oil systems.”

  “Because when the families came to claim the vehicles the cars wouldn’t run. The nearest place to tow them to would’ve been Pierce’s service station. The engines were toast,” Ethan added. “And see right here. These initials and dates were added later to the files after the reports were taken. They indicate the detectives updated the info.”

  “And even though the D.A. in Santa Cruz refuses to confirm, we suspect this was the method used to disable Gina’s Mazda.” Kinsey made a note of that on her sheet of paper. “Three of the girls were locals. We’ll include Megan Donnelly on that list even though she was visiting for the summer. She’d spent plenty of time here since she was a little girl. So we’ll consider her familiar enough with the town, the area, and the people so that whoever took her, she quite possibly knew him. That leaves the one girl who was labeled a runaway right from the get-go by a Detective Wayne Hanson, which may or may not be correct.”

  “Rebecca Linseed,” Ethan finished. “You can put her in the local category. The Linseed family lives over in Scotts Valley. In the report, the patrol officer noted Rebecca didn’t get along with her stepfather. For that reason, he tagged her as a runaway. Her mother says she didn’t have a car and set out on foot. So local and hitchhiking.”

  “Whichever she happened to be, she probably didn’t make it very far,” Kinsey stated flatly.

  “Okay so we move Rebecca into the local pile and assume she was on foot, a runaway. Inventory time. We’ve got one runaway, three hitchhikers, three who were driving their own cars, traveling through Pelican Pointe whether going north or south, but never made it to the other side, and three local girls who simply vanished into the night,” Logan uttered in disgust. “So the locals are Megan, Belinda Truitt, and Penny Hargrove.”

  “That coincides with Logan’s spreadsheet he came up with,” Kinsey noted.

  Ethan rolled his eyes at Logan before he said, “Don’t forget Gina. We might as well include her especially if her car was tampered with. But yeah, that about sums it up. We’re at eleven victims and only one body.”

  “In the Carly Radigan case, one of the locals on the witness list that Detective Figueroa talked to on four different occasions was Kent Springer. Whose name, by the way, seems to keep popping up wherever we go which means we stop ignoring it just because he’s dead,” Logan stated. “Our man could be deceased.”

  “I agree. Interviewed four times tells me Figueroa wasn’t satisfied with Kent’s answers the first three times,” Ethan pointed out.

  “Exactly, so for now we have thirty names on our suspect list. In addition to Derek and Dale Stovall, Sal and Sam Turley, we’ve been able to add Jimmy Pierce, Flynn McCready, Carl and Mark Knudsen, Kent Springer, Joe Ferguson, and just about every other business owner in Pelican Pointe because apparently the detectives made the rounds.”

  “Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” Kinsey grumbled, clearly getting frustrated. But then, all of a sudden, she grabbed Logan’s arm. “Wait a minute, why didn’t I see this before now?”

  “What?”

  “Ethan, can you determine who in the area owned a maroon pickup twenty-five years ago? Maybe go through registration records?”

  “The one seen picking up Carly Radigan? Good catch.”

  “Bingo.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe jog someone’s memory.”

  “In the meantime, Kinsey mentioned something to me weeks ago that resonated,” Logan asserted. “The person we’re looking for has to have a sustainable income here in town; otherwise, h
e would’ve struck out for greener pastures a long time ago. I mean even Stovall and Turley are decent enough construction workers they continue to earn a living in the area. Times might be tough, but neither one moves on. Something keeps them here. If the guy we’re looking for is a business owner, he has a comfortable enough lifestyle that keeps him grounded here, same as Stovall and Turley.”

  “I said that?” Kinsey asked.

  Logan chuckled. “Yes, you did, and it’s a good theory.”

  “But what do we do with it?”

  “We keep digging until we hit pay dirt.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As June came to a close, Logan couldn’t quite get a handle on his relationship with Kinsey. Somehow over the past two months, they had slid gracefully into their own couple’s routine. Even while she managed to hold down three jobs, seven days a week, they spent most nights cozied up in her little loft. On weekends, he would often hang out at the restaurant or at Murphy’s until she got off work. It wasn’t uncommon for him to drive her back and forth because they were usually both headed in the same direction anyway. Nor was it strange for him to persuade Jordan into making sandwiches or some type of box supper for them to eat at midnight when Kinsey got off work.

  He knew Nick and Jordan, like the rest of the town, kept tabs on their comings and goings, mainly because he rarely slept in his bed at the B & B anymore.

  But frankly, Logan didn’t give a hang what the town or anyone else thought. And apparently neither did Kinsey. Since Troy’s arrest, his supporters had made some enemies in town. In fact, it had split the town down the middle. Some were just as entrenched in their belief that Troy was guilty as hell and should spend the rest of his life locked up. Those were far too many and impossible to dissuade.

  So far their own “investigation” had yielded them squat and life had gone on. Troy was still in county awaiting trial and that hadn’t changed because the judge had refused to grant him bond.

  During the June gloom, he and his crew had made great strides on the inside guts of the keeper’s cottage. Even without Troy on board, the rest of his crew, Paul, Drake, Derek, and insolent Sam had already run brand new electrical conduit throughout the house, installed new windows, removed countless piles of rotted wood planks and were in the process of replacing them with new cherry hardwood flooring.

  Within two weeks they would have the new staircase completed. The work on the tower had progressed as well. That team had sandblasted the lighthouse, resurfaced and repainted it, all the while removing corroded ironworks and replacing it with retooled metal they’d salvaged from other lighthouses.

  At nine-forty-seven a.m. Logan was standing at the base of the tower dealing with their first official county inspection out of Santa Cruz when the ground began to tremor beneath his feet. He heard someone from the tower crew standing above him yell, “earthquake.”

  The men on the keeper crew inside the bungalow dropped their tools and Logan saw them pour outside on the run to head for the open spaces.

  For almost fifty-two seconds, the earth rumbled and shook. Contrary to popular belief, crevices did not crack open, and swallow up a member of his crew. But it did create havoc and caused the tower crew teetering on the scaffolding above Logan to grab for the support ropes to keep from falling off.

  As quickly as the vibration began though, it was over. Paul Bonner was the first worker back inside the house. As soon as Logan heard Paul’s shout, he told the inspector, “It usually isn’t like this.” And took off in a run to see what was going on in the keeper’s cottage. What he saw had him yelling for everyone to stay back.

  The earthquake had split open one of the interior walls from floor to ceiling near what had once been the kitchen. As Logan approached the sizeable crack in the plaster, he noted it was a good twelve inches wide. On first glance, the gap exposed what looked like an anteroom no larger than a small closet. Logan did his best to peer into the opening without touching the now damaged support beam. “We need to clear away this debris and brace the rest of the wall before it collapses completely,” Logan said to Derek who had come up behind him to lean in over his shoulder.

  “That’s gonna put us way behind schedule. Way behind,” Derek grumbled. “What is that smell? Is that methane? Should I clear everyone out of here, Logan?”

  The odor hit Logan’s nose about the same time it did Derek’s. “Good idea. Keep everyone back until we know what we’re dealing with. Give me that pry bar over there,” Logan directed.

  “You sure that’s a good idea. What if the whole thing comes crashing down?”

  “I’ve done this before, Derek. I don’t plan on yanking it hard, just enough so I can see inside and locate the source of that smell. Get me a flashlight.”

  “Maybe something crawled back in there and died,” Derek reasoned as Paul Bonner handed him a flashlight to pass to Logan.

  “We’re about to find out,” Logan said as he gently increased pressure on the pry bar so he could get his head and left shoulder through what was now the entrance to another room. With the light, he scanned the black hole from wall-to-wall, squinting into the dark. Spiders had taken over the area and weaved an intricate pattern of gray, stringy cobwebs.

  About three feet from the opening, Logan saw a squared, wooden door that had been left propped open. It looked as though it led down to what Logan assumed was a root cellar. He managed to inch further in by leaning against the stronger side of the wall for support. Dust filtered down ending up in his hair and on his face. He squeezed the rest of his body through the opening until he stood inside the room. The air in this spot had an overpowering stench that took his breath away. He quickly pulled out a painter’s mask from his jacket pocket, covered his nose and mouth.

  The wooden floor creaked under his weight because it was as rotted as the rest of the place had been the first time Logan had laid eyes on it. Careful not to put his foot through a weak plank, he stepped to the open door, peered down. Once again, he relied on the beam from the flashlight to see. But this time he noted the four walls were made of dirt in a space that was no more than six feet in diameter. His eyes tracked the light and landed on an unmistakable object in the corner. Logan sucked in a breath of fetid air. The urge to throw up hit him right before the urge to run. But there was nowhere to go. He backed up this time, putting his heavy foot through the flooring. He jerked it out, wedged his shoulder through the opening and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The moment he was free, he reached into his back pocket, fumbling for his iPhone.

  Derek saw his hands shake. “What’s wrong? What’s in there?”

  For the first time Logan noticed Paul Bonner standing next to Derek. Logan jerked his head toward the door. “Leave. Get out. All of you. Now! Go wait outside.”

  With his hands still shaking, Logan thumbed through his contact list until he found the number he wanted. Holding the phone up to his ear, he waited for an answer. “Brent, you need to get over to the lighthouse. We found a body in what looks like a root cellar. You heard me right. And you better bring a forensics team with you.”

  If the earthquake created chaos at Logan’s work site, the discovery of mummified remains brought pandemonium.

  Brent Cody arrived on the scene bringing what seemed like half of Santa Cruz County with him. By the time Logan had finished giving his statement it was almost five o’ clock. He had done his best over the course of that time to describe what he’d seen, what he’d done, what he’d touched inside that dark cubby hole. He could tell them with some certainty he knew the remains had been female, either that, or a man with long blond hair. The only saving grace for him is it hadn’t been Megan’s hair color.

  The one thing Logan hadn’t mentioned is that he’d probably never get the image out of his brain.

  When he looked up and spotted Kinsey, his heart felt like it flipped over in his chest. She had a tendency to do that to him. She came running up, peppy as ever.

  “I heard what happened. Are you okay?�
��

  “I’ll never be okay after seeing that. You want the gritty details?” He thumbed a hand over his shoulder. “I just finished the story for them.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Not necessary. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen though. I just got back from a visit with Troy.”

  “How is the kid?”

  “Holding up, I guess. What else is he gonna do?”

  “I hate to say this, Kinsey. But I think finding this body just might be the turning point.”

  “Okay, now you’ve piqued my interest. Let’s hear it.”

  “Come on. We’ll go someplace we can talk. Trust me, they’re going to be here a while. They’ll have to tear that root cellar apart, even if they have to do it brick by brick, layer by layer of dirt.”

  As they crawled into Logan’s truck, the forensic criminalists had barely gotten started. Logan had already been told that the site would remain shut down until they had completed gathering all their evidence, an event that might possibly take as long as a week or more depending on what they found.

  That corpse had a story to tell. And Logan hoped like hell it would make things pop in Megan’s favor.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  At Sheriff Brent Cody’s urging the district attorney dropped the charges against Troy Dayton two days before the Fourth of July. It took another twenty-four hours after that before Santa Cruz County released Troy from custody the day before the holiday.

  Logan and Kinsey, along with Mona Bingham and Derek Stovall, lined up outside the jail in the loading and unloading zone waiting for him to emerge. By the time the outer door finally swung open and Troy appeared, four people began to applaud. And applaud they did.