A Trace of Revenge

by Lyle Howard

  “I heard it plain as day along with my Captain, Chief, and a few other essential personnel. Hale said ‘Sowell.’ At first, most of us thought he meant soul, s-o-u-l, as in pray for my soul, but I actually believe he was saying ‘Sowell,’ s-o-w-e-l-l—as in Captain Roy Sowell of the Truman. I think the Ensign was trying to name his killer.”

  The detective felt suddenly out of her element. The closest she ever had to a nautical experience was a rubber ducky in her tub when she was three years old. “So how do you think this gas was dispersed?”

  “So you did find evidence of gas?” Simms asked eagerly.

  Toby nodded. “We did, but I want to hear more of your thoughts.”

  “Okay,” Simms continued, as he twisted the mask in his hand. “Masks like this aren’t Coast Guard issue, which means that someone brought in onboard the Truman.”

  “And you think it was this Captain Sowell?” Lauren asked.

  Simms shrugged. “I don’t know. Possibly. All I know for sure is that someone knew ahead of time about the gas attack and was prepared for it. Was it the Captain? I would hate to think so, but any DNA you might have found on this thing was probably erased by sitting in the seawater for so long. For now, let’s just move past that. Somehow this gas needed to be dispersed in a huge quantity for it to overcome the entire crew. At first, I considered airborne delivery of the chemical, but how would they have been able to remove the ‘package’ they were after? To me, it makes more sense for the hijacking to take place by sea, and the fact that the Truman was probably running in stealth mode means that whoever robbed the Truman knew precisely when and where she was going to be. And if they planned on scuttling her, they wanted the ship to go down in the deepest part of the ocean. So the more I think about it, Captain Sowell might have been involved. He would be the only person who could order a course change.”

  “So you think there was a second ship out there?” Toby asked.

  “It would make perfect sense,” Simms agreed. “Think about it: if there were a second ship, it would be on Sowell’s orders to ignore it when it showed up on the radar. He could have identified it as a freighter or some other harmless vessel unaware of the Truman. Then the second ship disperses the gas somehow, ties up and boards the Truman, steals the ‘package,’ and slips off into the night—but not before setting off the explosion that kills nearly the entire crew.”

  “Nearly?” Lauren asked.

  Simms became angry. “Well, someone was wearing this mask. I seriously doubt they went down with the ship.”

  Toby stood up and began pacing. “Wow Scott, you’ve really done some thinking about this, haven’t you? You should consider joining the force after your stint in the service.”

  “No sir,” Simms disagreed. “My father and his father before him were life-long military men, Air Force and Marines. It’s in my blood—but I appreciate the job offer.”

  Toby tapped his foot as he considered his options. “I really need to get my hands on that satellite imagery.”

  The Petty Officer hated to sound negative. “Never going to happen. If this were a top-secret mission, which I think we can all assume it was, they would never release those pictures to you. I can guarantee it.”

  “Okay,” Toby said deliberately, while still walking around and thinking. “Then we’ll have to go at this from another direction. I’m going to see if I can track down large purchases of the toxin used to incapacitate the crew, and I also want to dig into Captain Roy Sowell’s background. Maybe I’ll turn something up there.”

  “And what can I do?” Simms asked.

  “Petty Officer Simms, you have gone above and beyond your responsibilities in this case. I want you to go back to your base and put your ear to the ground. See if you can find anything else that might substantiate your theory. And please, please don’t raise any suspicion. If the Admiral or anyone else finds out you’re digging around, you could find yourself in big trouble, and I don’t want that to happen. I’m sure by now there’s a transfer request sitting on my desk for the Ensign’s body, which means we have about a twenty-four hour lead on the Federal Government. They’ll discover exactly what we did and start their own investigation, so don’t be surprised when you get called in. Just tell them exactly what you told us. No need to lie. We’re all on the same side.”

  “And me?” Lauren asked.

  Toby reached out and shook the Petty Officer’s hand. “Thank you for all of your help, Scott. You’re everything our military strives for. You do honor to your family. I promise we’ll be in touch.”

  Simms stood up and put the mask back in the yellow pouch. “I’m guessing the Feds will want this too.”

  “If you don’t mind, can you leave it with us?” Toby asked, reaching out for the bag. “I want to run a few tests on it. I’ll let you know what we find out, and if it fits into your theory. If the Feds question you, just give them answers. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t even let them think you know more than they do. Be careful.”

  Simms shook Lauren’s hand, thanked her and left the room.

  “He’s a good man,” Toby said.

  “And his theory?”

  “Occam’s Razor, Lauren. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  Toby sat down on the edge of the table which creaked grudgingly under his weight. “You’re not going to like this, but I need you to focus on the Beckworth case. We can’t run both these cases simultaneously. We’re bound to miss something, and I don’t want that happening. I need you to go into the archives and track down if there have been any other murders with the same M.O.”

  “You mean, with a baseball bat?”

  “Specifically white ash baseball bats. I think I’m going to have my hands full dealing with the Feds on the Ensign’s death, so I need you to fully invest yourself in the Beckworth case. I don’t think the City of Jacksonville administration is going to wait too much longer for answers. I need you to do what you do best and nail this son of a bitch before he strikes again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Toby stood up and reached for the doorknob. “The forensic work is done on Beckworth. We need to divide our resources. These two cases seem totally unrelated, so we each need to focus on them separately. If you need me, you know where to find me. If I have a question for you, I’ll give you a call. And please, for now, let’s keep this all under wraps. See how much you can find out by yourself. I think the fewer people involved, the better.” He blew her a kiss as he left the room.

  Lauren stood alone in the interrogation room and scratched her head. As much as she hated deskwork, she knew it would pay off in the long run. She didn’t need anyone’s help. She had trained her entire life for just this sort of thing.

  As she stepped out into the corridor, she had no inkling of what had just fallen into her lap—and the extraordinary young man she was about to meet.

  25

  Lauren King sat at her desk with her back to a windowless wall inside the Police Memorial Building on East Bay Street. Less than a block from the flowing Saint John’s River, the main base of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was vertically challenged compared to the height of the surrounding pre-trial detention buildings, law libraries, and other state and Federal centers.

  A half-eaten turkey sandwich on rye sat on the corner of the desk. Compared to many other workstations in the open expanse of the Detective’s squad room, hers appeared to be the best organized. There were a few case folders and a very old picture of the parents that had adopted her at an early age. There was also a newer photo of her and Toby’s clan standing in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyworld; a monitor, phone, and a two-inch cactus plant in a tiny clay pot; and that was it. The cactus, which was the only species of plant that could thrive in the sunless environment, was a present from the Chief of Detectives. She remembered what he told
her the significance of the gift was; he’d said that the only difference between the cactus and his office was that the cactus had the pricks on the outside. That always made her chuckle.

  King always believed that a person’s clutter said a lot about them, even if it was just a façade. From what she could see, most of the other detectives must have lived by some other belief.

  She had her elbows on her desk and rested her head on her right hand while her left fingers worked the keyboard. She had been at this for hours now, and if it weren’t for the occasional self-induced slap to the face or a brisk walk around the busy squad room, she would have easily nodded off.

  She knew the search on AFIS, the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, would come up empty because Toby had found none at the airstrip or on Arthur Beckworth’s body or clothing. So the one thing she did know about the killer was that he or she was meticulous and thorough. The additional fact that Arthur Beckworth was a relatively large man had her leaning toward a male suspect, but if the murder weapon was indeed a baseball bat, it could prove to be a great gender equalizer.

  CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, would be her next stop. This database tracked the DNA of anyone that had been arrested or even swabbed by any contributing police agency anywhere in the world. Over 190 public law enforcement laboratories participated in the system across the United States. Internationally, more than 90 law enforcement laboratories in over 50 countries used the CODIS software for their own database searches.

  Matches made among profiles in CODIS could link crime scenes together, possibly identifying serial offenders. Based upon a match, police from multiple jurisdictions could coordinate their respective investigations and share the leads they developed independently.

  Since the evidence suggested that Beckworth had been hit from behind and all the damage was done to the back of his skull, the killer may not have even had actual physical contact with the commissioner, who must have had his back to his attacker. There were just so many things that didn’t make sense about this case. She kept going back to the established time of death. The last time he was seen, Beckworth was hobnobbing at a dinner party with a shipping mogul in Miami; and then, two hours later, he’s clubbed to death in the middle of a swamp.

  As the CODIS search continued on her monitor, something else crossed her mind. Something Toby had mentioned…Occam’s razor, the idea which proposed that the simplest answer is most often correct. She minimized the ongoing database pursuit on her screen and pulled up the websites for both the Jacksonville Sun and Miami Herald newspapers. Perhaps something in their coverage would give her something to go on. Anything was worth a try.

  The coverage in the Miami newspaper was sparse. There were a few mentions of Beckworth’s disappearance and a few more about his body being found, but otherwise the focus of most of the articles was on Peter Mason and his new line of ships and his quest to bring another baseball team to Florida. King didn’t really follow sports, having devoted most of her free time to reading procedural manuals and brushing up on the latest investigative techniques.

  The Detective jotted down Peter Mason’s name, being as familiar as everyone else recently was with his sudden influence in the city of Jacksonville. There was a definite link between the two men, but Mason was still entertaining the rest of the city council when Beckworth was being murdered.

  Just to touch all of the bases—pardon the pun, she thought—she pulled up an online profile of the cruise line owner. She read about his father’s dubious past, but there wasn’t anything about the “Cocaine Cowboys” of the eighties that stood out to her. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots as to where Peter Mason got the start-up capital for his business. As far as she could tell, the son had probably laundered his father’s hidden money through legal ventures and went on to live the American dream. If there were anything hinky there, the Feds would have been all over it by now. Peter Mason’s finances weren’t her problem.

  The Jacksonville Sun’s coverage of the Beckworth murder was a different story. There were hundreds of articles written over the past few weeks about Beckworth’s contrary viewpoint on Peter Mason’s development of a new ballpark on the waterfront. The detective leaned back in her chair and rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she began to read the voluminous text on the commissioner’s objections to rezoning for the stadium. As the pages scrolled by, she couldn’t help shake the feeling that something was hiding in this excess of information. Something was supposed to jump out and enlighten her with one of those rare “ah-ha” moments. She just couldn’t see it yet.

  At the bottom of her screen, the minimized icon for the CODIS program began to flash red. She clicked on the icon and began to read the results. Over the last twenty-five years, there were over sixty deaths with the same earmarks as Arthur Beckworth’s. When she requested the program to chart the deaths, they dotted the American landscape like a bad case of pubescent acne. New York, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco were just a small sampling. The cities were as indiscriminate as they were disturbing. Much to her dismay, the randomness of the dots on the map revealed no pattern, nothing other than mere happenstance that all the deaths were caused by a wooden weapon. She stared at the screen for what seemed like hours. She was stumped, and she despised that feeling of helplessness.

  Okay, she thought. Let’s take it one step further. She typed in the word “unsolved.” All but fourteen of the dots disappeared. Atlanta, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Houston, and a handful of other major cities including Miami remained. All densely populated, she figured. It also listed Jacksonville, which she assumed was Arthur Beckworth, because geographically, even though he was found outside of the city proper, it was still the largest metropolitan area nearby. No small towns, no rural areas except the airfield on the outskirts of her own city. Something was there, something she wasn’t seeing.

  King jotted down the date of the Miami incident. It was nearly twelve years ago, and the trail had grown cold. She hit the print button and sent the names and dates of the other thirteen unsolved murders to her printer. She would start with Miami.

  Sitting upright in her chair, she laced her fingers together and bent them back until all the knuckles cracked. They were limber and ready for active duty. Thirty seconds later, she was linked into the City of Miami Police database. She tapped in all the information it required to gain access to their files and then typed the date…November thirtieth, two thousand and five. The curser spun while she waited. Looking up at the clock she realized it was eight thirty in the evening already. Her shift had ended at six. No rest or overtime for the weary.

  First, a case number revealed itself, and then a name, but not a single name—two names: Franklin and Elizabeth Walker. She read the background information intently. It looked like a burglary gone wrong. They had been killed in their sleep. She pulled up one of the crime scene photos but quickly clicked off it. The picture, as she had imagined it would be, was gruesome and heartbreaking. According to the report, there were no signs of a struggle in the bedroom, but the living room was found in disarray. It made no sense to her until she scrolled down to the last page of the report. There had been a survivor of the attack! A seven-year-old boy had been found at the scene. He had also been bludgeoned, but it appeared that the assailant hadn’t waited around to confirm the boy’s death. She now had a possible eyewitness!

  Lauren dug through more of Miami P.D.’s database for follow-up reports. There were no fingerprints found. The pathology reports looked incredibly familiar. King’s Spider-Sense was beginning to tingle. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes trying to visualize the events of that night. A burglar breaks into a house full of people? That made no sense. If the killer is thorough enough not to leave prints, he has to be smart enough to case the house first. She skipped down to the property report. Nothing had been reported stolen.

  Bur
glary my ass, she muttered under her breath.

  Of the two lead detectives listed on the case, only one was still alive, but had retired out of state. She was going to need to have a chat with him. Twelve years ago was a long time, but if he were a cop worth his salt, he wouldn’t forget an unsolved case that had stained his record.

  Lauren jotted down his name and the last known address. He was living in San Diego. There was a three-hour difference, so it was around dinner time in California. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number. After five rings, a man’s voice answered.

  “Is this Jack Harris,” she asked “Detective Jack Harris?”

  There was a pause on the line. “Holy crap, no one’s called me Detective in over five years. Who is this?”

  “I hate to bother you detective, but my name is Lauren King, and I’m a detective with the City of Jacksonville. I’m working a homicide that I believe has something in common with an old case of yours.”

  “First off Detective, call me Jack. And second, I should have you know that I’ve been diagnosed with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. I think if you had called me in a year from now, I probably would be trying to answer the microwave oven.”

  King shook her head. “I am so sorry to hear that, Jack. Perhaps I can give you one last shot at clearing your case. I’d really like to try if you’re up to it.”

  Harris spoke to someone in the background. “I’m living with my son’s family, and every time I answer the phone, they think I’m ordering a Sham-Wow.”

  Lauren chuckled. “That’s funny, Jack. I remember those commercials.”

  Harris berated whoever was there with him. “God damn it, when I start to drool then you can take the phone away, but until then back the hell off!”

  Lauren interrupted. “Is this a bad time? Do you want me to call back?”

  “Hell no,” he snapped. “I just wish my kids would read up on the disease or something. I’m coherent, aren’t I? I just misplace stuff every once in a while.”