Dead in the Water

by Annelise Ryan

  “Did your mother verify that? Does she live here with you?” Hurley asks, and I wonder if he seriously thinks this is a possibility. To me, it’s obvious this house hasn’t had a woman’s touch of any kind in a long time, even from a woman like me who knows how to live peaceably among dust motes, clutter, and the occasional dried-food particle.

  Carmichael shakes his head, looking sad. “My mother used to live here, but she’s dead now. Died six years ago from breast cancer. My father died right after I was born, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so I inherited this house after my mom passed.”

  That explained the deteriorating state of the house and lot.

  Hurley takes out his notebook and pen. “What is this friend’s name and how did he say he knew your mother?”

  “His name is Walter Scott, and he said he used to work with my mom in a canning factory thirty years ago.”

  This piques my interest. The canning factory is long gone, shut down nearly two decades ago, but something about Walter Scott’s name niggles at my brain. “What does this guy look like?”

  “He’s big, like six and a half feet tall,” Carmichael says, stretching an arm above his head. “He’s got hazel eyes and very dark hair, though I think he colors it. It doesn’t look natural. He’s going bald on top, and once I saw a stain on his scalp, which I think was from hair dye.”

  Hurley is busy jotting all this down, but he asks another question as he writes. “So you just took this guy’s word for it that he knew your mother? And you let him borrow your car?” His voice is rife with skepticism and it makes Carmichael bristle.

  “No, I’m not stupid,” he says irritably. “It’s not like I just met the guy and let him take my car. I’ve known him for two years and I talked to some other people who knew him to make sure he was okay.”

  “How did you meet?” Hurley asks.

  Carmichael hesitates, looking back and forth between Hurley and me before he sighs, cocking his head in resignation. Clearly, whatever his answer is, he expects us to judge him by it.

  “I met him through an online gaming forum,” he says. “And before you go warning me about all the hazards of the Internet, and how trolls are lurking around every corner, I’m well aware of that. Like I said, I spent some time getting to know the guy.” He pauses and shrugs. “To be honest, he’s been super nice to me and I enjoy his company. I suppose he’s been kind of a father figure to me.”

  I shake my head in disgust. Assuming the man we’re discussing is Cedric Novak, it irritates me to think of him being a father figure to some stranger when he can’t be bothered to do the same for me, his own kid. Yet another check mark in my mental disappointment column. So far, my mental chart is heavily one-sided, weighted toward the negative.

  “How can we get a hold of Mr. Scott?” Hurley asks.

  “He doesn’t have a phone,” Carmichael says, looking a tad sheepish. He blinks real fast a few times and leans back away from us in a mini flinch, like he’s expecting us to slap him upside the head or something. Based on what he’s told us so far, we probably should. I couldn’t script a better victim for a serial killer. “I’m well aware of how it looks. But it’s nothing sinister. The guy simply doesn’t like cell phones, that’s all. He’s a little on the paranoid side and he’s convinced the government tracks people through their phones—reading their texts, listening in on calls, and monitoring where they go with GPS. What’s more, he’s convinced the radio waves coming at the phone can cause brain tumors. So he refuses to have one.”

  While this sounds like something from Arnie’s rhetoric, there is some evidence to support the brain tumor theory.

  “He does have e-mail, though,” Carmichael adds hopefully. “That’s how I typically communicate with him.”

  Our mystery guy sounds like the perfect president for Arnie’s Paranoid Ideation Club; although if it is my father, his paranoia is more justified than Arnie’s. Someone probably is after Novak.

  “Can you give me his current e-mail address?” Hurley asks.

  Carmichael nods and rattles it off from memory. “Ivanhoe51580@gmail.com.”

  The use of the ID “Ivanhoe” and the numbers that follow suddenly clarify my niggling thought. Now I’m certain our mystery man is my father, and I ask Carmichael one more question. “Does Mr. Scott smoke by any chance?”

  Carmichael starts to shake his head, then stops. “Not cigarettes. But he does puff on a pipe now and again.”

  All the puzzle pieces fit. I shoot a nervous look at Hurley, but he’s still busy writing. He fires off a few more questions at Carmichael. “What time did Mr. Scott borrow your car yesterday? And when did he return it? Did he say why he wanted it?”

  Carmichael hesitates before answering, parsing the questions. “He said he needed to run some errands. He picked the car up around ten yesterday morning and brought it back a little after three. And he gave me ten bucks for gas money. I can’t imagine he used that much, even if he took the car out of town, but he’s always been real generous about that kind of stuff.”

  A tiny surge of anger makes me clench my fists. Though I suppose it’s easy to be generous with gas money to a stranger when you skip out on fourteen years of child support.

  Hurley pockets his pen and notebook and gets up from his chair. “Mind if we take a look at your car?”

  Judging from the expression on Carmichael’s face, he does mind. But I can see him mentally weighing the pros and cons of refusing, and apparently the cons win out. “I suppose,” he says, getting up from the table and reaching into his pocket. He hands over a key ring with four keys on it, one of which is for a car. “You can go out that way if you want,” Carmichael says, pointing to a back door.

  Hurley leads the way with me on his heels and Carmichael bringing up the rear. The back door is locked—both a knob lock and a dead bolt—and Hurley undoes them both. We descend three stairs from a cement stoop into the backyard, which is in worse shape than the front. A chain-link fence surrounds the yard and along the perimeter are several flower beds, which are overgrown with weeds. The yard is almost all dirt, with a few patches of dead, brown grass scattered here and there. There is a gate in the fence just to the right of us and the car is parked on the other side of it. Hurley opens the gate, which protests with a loud, tooth-chilling squeal, and unlocks the driver side door of the car.

  It squeals, too—though with less vehemence—thanks to a large dent peppered with rust in the front quarter panel near the hinges. The driver’s seat is cloth covered and there are several small tears in it. The dashboard, which was red when the car was new, has been sun-bleached to a weird shade of orange. Hurley pokes his head inside and I lean in over his shoulder and take a big whiff of the inside air. The smell of apple-scented pipe tobacco is unmistakable and it’s like a ride in a time machine. I don’t have many memories of my father, and the ones I do have are fading, but this one has persisted over time. Whenever I smell apple pipe tobacco, I can see myself curled up on his lap; I can feel the warmth of his chest against my back; I can hear the deep rumble of his voice as he reads to me. The memory makes me feel secure, loved, safe . . . and sad.

  “I need to get someone out here to dust the inside of this car for prints,” Hurley says, straightening up and shutting the car door.

  “Do you really think Walter killed someone?” Carmichael asks, looking alarmed. “He’s a nice guy, honest. I can’t see him doing something like that.”

  Hurley looks at him, his face devoid of emotion. “We don’t know if he did anything. All we know is he was seen in the area and is therefore a person of interest. I need to find him and talk to him. Do you have any future plans to see him?”

  Carmichael shakes his head immediately, and if it wasn’t for the blatant look of relief on his face, I’d suspect him of lying.

  Hurley gets on his phone and calls Jonas, explaining what he needs. “Jonas will be here in fifteen minutes,” he says once he’s done and has disconnected the call.

  Carmi
chael is standing at the base of his back stoop, staring at us with a dumbstruck expression. I imagine his mind is whirling like a tornado inside his head, trying to sort everything out.

  “You can go back inside and resume your game if you want,” I tell him. “We can do this without you here and we’ll return your keys as soon as we’re done.”

  He nods robotically, turns, climbs the stairs, and disappears inside his house.

  “ ‘Walter Scott’ is a phony name,” I tell Hurley.

  He nods. “Figured as much.”

  “And it’s one I’m betting our mystery guy picked for a reason. It’s the same reason he used ‘Ivanhoe’ in his e-mail address.”

  Hurley narrows his eyes at me. “What are you saying?”

  “My father’s first name—his given first name—is Cedric. When Trooper Grimes told me about him, I got curious and did some research on the Internet. I didn’t find him, of course, but I did find out some interesting tidbits about his name. The first time Cedric ever appeared anywhere was in the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. The original Anglo-Saxon spelling was Cerdic, but Scott transposed the letters, effectively creating a new English first name. And those numbers in the e-mail address? They’re my birthday.”

  Hurley contemplates this for a moment. “Hunh,” he says finally. “So you’re convinced our mystery man is your father?”

  “I am, even more so after poking my head inside the car. There’s a lingering scent of apple-flavored pipe tobacco in there and I distinctly remember that smell from my childhood. My father smoked a pipe and he always used the apple-flavored tobacco.”

  “That was thirty years ago,” Hurley says. I start to argue the point, but he stops me with a finger on my lips. “You may well be right, but you need to be careful about jumping to conclusions. If you get your mind too set on one answer, you’ll be inclined to ignore any facts suggesting a different one. An open and objective mind-set is critical during an investigation.”

  His cautionary tone annoys me for some reason, but before I can say another word, my cell phone rings. When I take it out of my pocket, I see it’s Arnie calling.

  “Hey, Arnie. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got some findings I thought you and Hurley would want to know about.”

  “Okay, hold on a sec while I put you on speaker so Hurley can hear, too.” Hurley and I both look around us to make sure no one who can overhear is nearby. Though the coast appears clear, Hurley motions me closer to the garage, which moves us farther from the house. “Okay, Arnie, go ahead.”

  “I looked at the water we found in Hal’s lungs, water Otto said came from deep inside, so it was likely the very first water he came into contact with after his throat . . . after he . . . after the incident on the boat,” he manages finally, and I wonder if he’s being careful with his words for my sake, his own sake, or both. “I found the same diatoms in the lung water that I found in the section of the lake where the boat was anchored. Hal definitely went into the water there and he was still breathing at the time.”

  There is a moment of silence. I squeeze my eyes closed, as if this could somehow shut out the images trying to form in my brain.

  Arnie says, “If it helps, Otto said Hal was probably unconscious due to blood loss when he went in the water.”

  “It does help,” I say, opening my eyes. “Thanks.”

  Hurley says, “The diatoms thing is an interesting find, but I don’t see how it gets us any closer to figuring out who’s behind this.”

  “I know,” Arnie says. “But at least it verifies our current version of the events. I imagine I’ll find the same diatoms in Tina’s lungs once Otto gets them to me.”

  “Thanks, Arnie,” I say, disappointed. “Give us a holler back if you come up with anything else.”

  “But I’m not done,” he says, and I detect a hint of excitement in his tone that I know well. Arnie has something juicy, something big, and my heart does a little flip-flop in anticipation.

  “Bear with me,” Arnie says. “We all pulled long hours through the night to work on this stuff. To start with, Laura went through that garbage from the motel. She found a bag of stuff that clearly came from Keith Lundberg’s room, because there were items in it with his name on them, a pay envelope and some benefit information from the Ford place. The bag was tied with a knot and closed tight so everything in that bag would have come from Lundberg’s room. And in it she found a bunch of shredded paper. So she started putting the shreds back together—fortunately, it wasn’t one of those cross shredders—and she found an invoice for a large order of liquid tobacco juice, like the kind used in those e-cigs, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “So Keith vapes. How does that help us?”

  “Well, for one thing, the invoice wasn’t in his name. It was billed to a Jeremy Prince, but at the motel address.”

  Hurley says, “So Keith let someone else use his address at the motel for a delivery. That sort of thing happens more than we want to know for all kinds of contraband stuff. And tobacco juice isn’t illegal.”

  A mental lightbulb pops on in my head and I feel a trill of excitement because I think I know where Arnie is headed. “It’s not illegal, but it may be our smoking gun. Am I right, Arnie?”

  “Hey, don’t go ruining my reveal here,” Arnie whines as Hurley looks at me with a confused expression.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Continue.”

  “Okay, so our initial tox screen on Carolyn Abernathy came back negative and we haven’t found any other causes for her death, and then it dawned on me that nicotine can be used as a poison. So I tested Carolyn’s stomach contents to see if there was any in there.”

  “That’s it?” Hurley says, sounding excited. “Somebody poisoned her food with nicotine?”

  “Nope,” Arnie says. “The gastric contents were negative.”

  Hurley scrunches his face in irritation or confusion—I can’t tell which. Probably both.

  “But her blood tested positive,” Arnie adds. “I found levels so high in her blood it would have killed her pretty quickly. And it would have killed the bugs. In fact, it’s used as a pesticide in some places.”

  “Was Carolyn a smoker?” Hurley asks.

  “No,” I tell him. “Her lungs would have shown it and they were clean.”

  “Then how—”

  “Nicotine can also be absorbed through the skin,” I say. “Lots of people use nicotine patches when they’re trying to quit smoking.”

  “But she didn’t have any patches on her anywhere,” Arnie says. “I suppose it could have been injected into her. Otto said it would have been easy to miss an injection site on her body because of the level of decomposition.”

  “I don’t think so, Arnie,” I say, envisioning Carolyn Abernathy’s death scene and her medical records. “I have a better idea. Do you have the rubber gloves she was wearing to do the dishes?”

  “I do.”

  “Turn them inside out, collect any residue you find, and test it for nicotine. I’m betting it will be positive. And when you’re done testing that, find the jar of skin cream she had and test it for nicotine, too.”

  “You are brilliant!” Arnie says.

  “She is indeed,” Hurley says with a smile.

  “It makes sense,” I tell them. “She had a bad skin condition and her hands and fingers were severely affected. According to her medical record, her fingers were often cracked open and bleeding. That’s why she wore the gloves, to protect her hands. But if her skin cream was contaminated with nicotine and she put it on her hands with those open wounds, she would have absorbed the nicotine quickly and easily. She probably put the cream on right before she went to do the dishes and she started feeling the effects almost immediately. That’s why she took the gloves off and sat down at the table.”

  “So we have our cause of death,” Hurley says.

  “We do,” I say with a smile. “And a manner of death as well. Carolyn Abernathy was definitely murdered.”

&nbs
p; Jonas has arrived and Hurley walks over to meet him by the car. Hurley opens the driver’s-side door, points to the handle, and then points to stuff inside the car. I notice the driver’s seat is pushed back as far as it will go, the way it would be if my father had been behind the wheel.

  “Stellar work, Arnie!” I say.

  “Thanks! And if you like that, you’re really going to like what I tell you next—because I’m still not done. I also ran an analysis on this oily substance the county guys collected from the lid of the cooler on Hal’s boat. Basically, it was fishing lure oil, but it had one distinctive quality that was unusual. It had a high level of nicotine, not a substance you typically find in that stuff.”

  I take a moment to digest what Arnie just told me. Jonas and Hurley have their heads stuck inside Carmichael’s car, and Jonas is already in the process of dusting the steering wheel.

  “Oh, my God, Arnie,” I say, making the connection. “Are you telling me these two cases are connected?” I must have said this louder than I meant to, because Hurley rears back out of the car and stares at me with a questioning look.

  “Kind of looks that way,” Arnie says.

  “Have you told Otto yet?”

  “I told him everything except for your idea about the cream. I’ll get right on that and let you know what I find.”

  Hurley is standing in front of me, looking apoplectic, his eyes bugging out of his head, bouncing from one foot to the other.

  “I have to go, Arnie, but this is great work. Keep us posted with anything new you find, okay?”

  “Will do.” I disconnect the call and fill Hurley in on Arnie’s latest revelation. “Arnie found nicotine in some fish lure oil that was on the lid of the cooler on Hal’s boat.”

  “Nicotine . . . Wait, which case are we talking about here?” Hurley says, scratching his head.

  “They’re connected somehow, Hurley. Hal, Tina, Carolyn Abernathy . . . they’re all connected.”

  Hurley rakes a hand through his hair. “No wonder our Mr. Lundberg . . . or whoever he is, disappeared. Did he kill all three of them?”