Onyx Webb: Book Three

by Diandra Archer

  “You and I both know when the bodies started to pile up, don’t we, Hell? It started right after—”

  Hell Daniels pulled his feet off the desk and stood up. “Listen, I’ll make you one hell of a deal. I’ll look at this movie or whatever it is, as long as I don’t have to make a trip out to the cove to do it.”

  “You’ll take a serious look at it?”

  “Yes, Mayor. You send the kid in with the film and what the hell, I’ll take a look,” Hell said. “And what the hell, let’s make it interesting. I’ll put up a sawbuck against your Lincoln that it’s not Onyx.”

  How could it be? Hell thought after the mayor had left his office. No one could survive in the woods for over a year, especially a severely burned woman. Whatever George Dietz had seen—or thought he saw—wasn’t Onyx.

  Onyx Webb was dead.

  “Do you have a projector?” George Dietz asked. “If not, I’ve got one in my trunk.”

  I’ll bet you do, Hell Daniels thought. Word was the kid had been showing the film all over town to anyone who’d watch. Hell of a mess he’d caused, rumors flying around like geese.

  “Over there,” Hell said, pointing to a cabinet. George found the projector and began threading the film into the machine. “So, when in the hell was it you shot this film of yours?”

  “Middle of April,” George said. “It was cold out, but clear.”

  “One hell of a fire you set out there,” Hell said. “Church says you go straight to hell for desecrating a grave.”

  “We were careful, Sheriff,” George said. George turned off the lights, sat down next to the projector, and turned it on. Seconds later, a title appeared on the screen that read:

  The Ghost of Suicide Cove:

  A Film by George Dietz

  “Suicide Cove?” Hell asked.

  “Pretty good, huh?” George said with a smile. “I was going to call it Murder Cove, but—”

  “How long before we get to the thing?” Hell asked, cutting the kid off.

  “The ghost comes in about two thirds of the way through,” George said.

  Hell Daniels shook his head and lowered himself into a chair. This was going to take a lot longer than he hoped.

  The film began with a series of shots of the cliffs surrounding Crimson Cove lighthouse, the short history of Crimson Cove, followed by a number of interviews with people in the town regarding the recent string of unexplained deaths. Finally, about twenty minutes in, they got to the part Hell Daniels was interested in.

  The film showed three kids waiting for their cue to begin acting. “When are we gonna start shooting? It’s freezing out here,” one of the boys said.

  “When I’m good and ready,” George Dietz could be heard saying from behind the camera. “Okay, places everyone.”

  “There,” George told Hell. “See?”

  “I don’t see a damn thing,” Hell said.

  “Out in the trees.”

  Hell leaned forward and squinted. “That? That gray thing, that’s what you think is Onyx Webb?”

  “It is Onyx Webb,” George said defiantly. “Keep watching. You’ll see.”

  Another minute passed and, once again, George could be heard behind the camera. “Okay, places. And action!”

  The girl on the screen began delivering her lines, but the camera was no longer focused on her—it had been refocused on the gray figure standing in the trees.

  “Does that look like a deer to you, Sheriff?” George asked.

  No, it wasn’t a deer.

  It was a person.

  A woman.

  “Well?” George asked, turning off the projector.

  “Hell, George, looks more like one of those Sasquatch things that people keep talking about up near Seattle than it does a woman,” Hell said.

  “I know it’s her, and you know it’s her. I saw Onyx Webb in the woods with my own two eyes, and that film is my ticket to Hollywood.”

  “Sorry, George, but I got to confiscate that film,” Hell said.

  “It’s all yours, Sheriff,” George said walking to the door. “I figured you probably would. That’s why I had three copies made.”

  Hell Daniels stood in the clearing, looking at the lighthouse. The place was starting to have that look—the way all buildings tend to appear when no one is taking care of them, especially in salt air—the paint on the outside and doors were beginning to peel, the grass surrounding the place was almost two-feet tall and laced with weeds.

  That was nothing compared to the inside. Between the vagrants and groups of destructive teenagers hanging out, the place was a mess, which was why Hell had the door to the lighthouse—and the caretaker’s house, at least what was left of it after the fire—nailed shut six months earlier.

  The question now was what to do about George Dietz and his damn movie. Though he wasn’t going to admit it to the kid, Hell was convinced the person on the film was Onyx. How that was possible was a mystery, but he was certain it was her.

  The last thing Hell wanted, though, was for people to get all riled up believing the ghost of Onyx Webb was roaming the woods at night. And he definitely didn’t want them thinking the recent string of unexplained deaths was caused by her presence. Hell, what a mess that would make.

  But, thanks to George, it might already be too late.

  To the best of everyone’s knowledge, the last time Onyx Webb had been seen alive was in her room at the hospital a little after seven in the evening when the shifts changed. The next time they went in, she was gone.

  If she’d been on her way to the lighthouse, she never made it. Hell had stationed his son, Clayton Daniels Jr., at the lighthouse door in case Onyx decided to go back there. Hell had agreed to hire the kid a few weeks earlier, against his better judgment, when he could no longer take his wife’s nagging about the boy getting gainful employment. And though Junior had fallen asleep, he swore up and down there was no way the woman could have gotten past him, which was probably true.

  So where had Onyx gone? It had to be the woods.

  Hell walked among the tall pines for about a quarter-mile when he spotted what looked like a piece of white cotton fabric near the base of a tree, partially covered in dirt.

  Could be a hospital gown, Hell thought. He bent down to study it. Touching the cloth he noticed a large bone protruding from under the soil.

  Hell pulled out his knife and dug gently in the dirt. Minutes later he had two rib bones, a humerus, a mandible, and what appeared to be a portion of a clavicle, which he wrapped in the white cotton fabric. With any luck, the coroner would confirm they belonged to a forty-year-old woman. Then he could declare Onyx Webb officially dead and put the rumors to rest.

  Two hours later, Hell Daniels stood in the coroner’s office and had his answer.

  “Sorry, Hell,” the coroner said. “These bones here definitely belong to a male.”

  “You positive?” Hell asked.

  “Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?”

  Not only was Hell back to square one, finding the bones had actually made things worse. Not only would the rumors about Onyx Webb alive in the woods persist, Hell Daniels had just discovered a fifteenth dead body.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Orlando, Florida

  August 5, 2010

  There are a certain number of things private investigators generally cannot do:

  They cannot carry a badge, nor can they impersonate law enforcement. They can’t wear a uniform or imply they are a federal official, nor can they make an official arrest—only a citizen’s arrest, as any citizen could do.

  They cannot wiretap a phone without a warrant, nor are they allowed to record conversations without the other party’s knowledge and consent.

  They can’t trespass on private property, nor are they allowed to enter someone’s home or office via illegal means—for example, picking a lock as private eyes are often seen doing in Hollywood movies.

  They are not allowed to tamper with someone’s mail, which is a
federal offense. And again—contrary to what people see in the movies—private investigators can’t simply run someone’s license plate by calling an old buddy.

  Private investigators are not allowed to access someone’s bank account, phone records, run a credit check without a person’s permission, or access court documents.

  Without doing any of the forbidden acts, it took Stormy Boyd less than two hours at the Savannah Police Department to identify the girl Koda Mulvaney had seen in the mirror.

  But there was something else.

  Stormy was pretty sure the man the Savannah PD had fingered for the crime—Wyatt Scrogger, currently sitting on death row and waiting to be executed—was innocent.

  “Are you sure?” Koda asked, sitting opposite Stormy Boyd on the sofa in the living room of his penthouse apartment.

  “As sure as I can be without meeting her myself and asking what her name is,” Boyd said.

  “But? It’s only been three days.”

  “Donuts,” Stormy replied.

  “What?”

  “The oldest trick in the book when it comes to dealing with police,” Stormy said. “I went to the station with two dozen donuts right as the shifts changed. Cops rarely take bribes, Koda—at least not the honest ones—but they never turn down donuts.”

  “And they just gave you what you were looking for?”

  “Pretty much,” Stormy said. “All I had to do was tell them exactly what I wanted.”

  “Which was…?”

  “Any files they might have for young girls, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, who’d gone missing in the Savannah area.”

  “And they found one,” Koda said.

  “No,” Stormy said. “They had eleven.”

  “Jesus,” Koda said.

  “That’s what I said,” Stormy replied. “Of course, when I saw the stack of files, I knew immediately that something very bad had been going on in Savannah for a while.”

  “And all eleven of these girls went missing?” Koda asked. “They never found any of them?”

  Stormy shook his head, trying to figure out how much he needed—or wanted—to share about what he’d discovered. Koda Mulvaney had hired him to identify the girl—that was all. The rest was really outside the assignment. On the other hand, some of what Stormy had discovered might be important to Koda.

  “Actually, ten of the eleven girls were found within forty-eight hours,” Stormy said.

  “Found?”

  “Dead,” Stormy said.

  “Oh, man,” Koda said. “And the eleventh girl…?”

  “The eleventh girl is the one you saw in the mirror,” Stormy said. “Her body was never found, but I think it’s safe to assume she was murdered, just as the others had been.”

  Koda stood up and paced around the living room of the penthouse. “How were they killed?”

  “Are you sure this is something you want to know?” Stormy said. “I can assure you, it’s not the type of thing you’ll be able to get out of your mind very easily.”

  Koda nodded.

  “Each of the girls had been injected with a lethal dose of the drug ketamine,” Stormy said.

  As horrible as the thought of someone taking another person’s life was, what Stormy Boyd had just described did not track with his severe warning.

  “There’s more,” Stormy said. “When they found the bodies, each of the girls was missing their legs. They’d been cut off just below the hips.”

  Koda ran his fingers through his hair, now pacing the floor again. “But the girl in the mirror was never found, right? So maybe that’s not what happened to her.”

  Stormy nodded. “Yes, that’s possible. But after I left the Savannah PD, I did a bit more digging. I want to show you something.”

  Stormy pulled a file folder from his briefcase and placed it in his lap. Then he pulled a black-and-white photo from the file and laid it on the coffee table. “This is twenty-year-old Joselyn Knox. She was the first known victim, in the state of Georgia at least. Her naked, legless body was found in 1980 at the base of James Oglethorpe’s statue in Chippewa Square, with an anagram scrawled across her chest.”

  “An anagram?”

  “A message with the letters rearranged to spell something else,” Stormy said. “Each of the girls killed was found with a message written across their torso. That’s why the media ended up calling him The Anagram Killer.”

  “What was the message?”

  “Spike Heel Tiger,” Stormy said.

  “Spike Heel Tiger?” Koda repeated. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Stormy said. “Remember, it’s an anagram. But if you rearrange the letters, it reads, ‘I Keep Their Legs.’”

  Koda shook his head. “Sick bastard.”

  “All serial killers are in one way or another,” Stormy said. “Not to excuse their actions, of course, but someone who finds the only way to compensate for their inadequacies is to kill another human being has some form of emptiness they’re trying to fill.”

  Stormy laid a second photograph on the table next to the first. “This is Deborah Deegan. Debbie was sixteen. They found her body posed on a bench on Riverfront Plaza outside a restaurant. 1981.”

  Next to that he laid a third photo.

  “This is eighteen-year-old Martha Crowley, found in the gazebo in the center of Whitfield Square at the intersection of Habersham Street and Wayne, directly across from The First Congressional Church. She was taken and killed in the summer of 1982.”

  Next to that Stormy laid a fourth picture.

  “And here’s fifteen-year-old Kathleen Wexler, murdered in June of 1983. They found Kathleen’s body propped up against the door of the lighthouse out on Tybee Island. What do you see now?”

  “They all look alike,” Koda said.

  Stormy nodded. “Yes, they look alike. But who else do they look like?”

  The realization hit Koda across the face like a slap. “Jesus, they look just like the girl I saw in the mirror, all of them.”

  “Exactly,” Stormy said as he pulled the final six photos from the file and fanned them out on the table with the others. “Ten girls in ten years—one per year, every year—eleven, when you include the girl you saw. Each of the ten virtually identical—each of them young, pretty, blonde, between fourteen and twenty-two years old. Each of them killed the same way, with an overdose of ketamine. Each of them had their legs removed and an anagram scrawled on their chest.”

  “What’s her name?” Koda asked finally. “The girl I saw in the mirror. What is her name?”

  “Her name is Juniper Cole.” Stormy said.

  “Juniper,” Koda repeated softly. “Are you sure?”

  Stormy reached over and removed the final photograph from the file and laid it on the table with the others. “I don’t know, Koda. You’re the one who saw her, you tell me.”

  Koda studied the picture, and then nodded. “Yeah, it’s her.”

  “And just in case either of us has the slightest doubt, there’s this,” Stormy said, removing a final sheet of paper from the file. A photocopy of an article from the Savannah Morning News—dated June 4, 1979.

  Koda took the paper and read the headline.

  Child Piano Prodigy Goes Missing from Prom, Police Fear the Worst

  “She played the piano?” Koda asked.

  “Fits, doesn’t it?” Stormy said. “Juniper Cole was something of a celebrity in Savannah. Everyone knew her. She was on the Johnny Carson Show when she was eight. Made a million dollars by the time she was fourteen. Then her father stole it all and ran off to California with his secretary. Mother took to the bottle, hard. Juniper simply quit playing after that.”

  “This keeps getting worse,” Koda said.

  “More than you know,” Stormy said. “Because they never found Juniper’s body, the Savannah PD never made the connection between her murder and the murder of the other girls. So the district attorney—an ambitious piece of work by the name of Cec
elia Jaing—convicted someone else for Juniper’s murder.”

  “Who?” Koda asked.

  “Guy by the name of Wyatt Scrogger,” Stormy said. “Been sitting on death row for almost thirty years.”

  “At least something good happened,” Koda said.

  Stormy shrugged his shoulders and made a face. “I’m not so sure.”

  “What? You think they convicted the wrong guy?”

  “My gut tells me it’s not him,” Stormy said. “I’ve learned to trust my gut.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chicago, Illinois

  December 2, 1965

  After three years being on the wagon, Rocky Dredge gave in and started drinking. The stress of making his weekly payments to Fat Sal had simply become too much to handle. Fortunately, the previous night’s take would be just enough to keep Fat Sal and his goons at bay for another week. He was getting way behind after the fire.

  Rocky set his martini on the desk and spun the dial on the safe—0 left, 0 right, and 7 left—then pulled on the big black handle.

  The safe was empty.

  No, no, no, no, no, Rocky thought over and over. There was some mistake. Yes, he’d had a few drinks last night, but he didn’t get drunk. Did he?

  Rocky lifted the martini glass and downed the clear liquid with three quick gulps. Think. Think! Had he hid the money somewhere else? Did he set it down on the way to the office? No, he’d put the money in the safe—didn’t he?

  Rocky began to panic as he thought about what Fat Sal would do when he failed to show with his weekly payment.

  Rocky left the office and went to the bar and checked every shelf for the money bag. It wasn’t there. He grabbed an open bottle of Finlandia and took a swig. Screw martinis. For that matter, screw James Bond. He was out of his mind with fear, picturing Chuckie Bags pounding his face in while Phil Spilatro waited patiently for his turn with a Louisville Slugger.

  Rocky took a few more big gulps of vodka and plopped in a seat at the bar. He was always so careful with the money. And no one had the combination to the safe…