“Yeah, hello?”
“Skylar. It’s Scot.”
“Ah, your timing is impeccable as always,” she said slumping down into a chair. “Are you sure you don’t have this boat of yours rigged with surveillance cameras?” Scot had been there for her after she lost Alex. They’d worked side by side and Alex had been his closest friend. If it hadn’t been for him she wouldn’t have even been in Carrabelle. She would still be stuck in her New York apartment gaining weight and chowing down on TV dinners. He’d been the one to pull her out of her funk. The only one who knew how to get beyond the wall she put up to keep people at arm’s length.
“Let me guess, you were about to have a drink?”
“One of many.”
“You know, Skylar, I’m not one to bust anyone’s balls over drinking but um…”
“Ben called you, didn’t he?”
There was a pause.
“Well can you blame him? Though I must admit I would have liked to have been there when you were doing it just to see the look on his face.” He let out a chuckle. That was just like him. One moment he could be dead serious, the next acting like it was all one big joke. “But no, seriously, is everything okay? I thought things were looking up.”
“They are,” she replied, poking her sandwich like she’d never seen one before.
“Then you want to talk about what’s going on?”
“Nothing. Like I said to Ben. Things are fine. I’m staying busy.”
“With the multiple guys on the weekends.”
She shook her head. “Scot, did you ask Ben to stalk me because—”
“No. Don’t be stupid. You’re not in the big city anymore, Skylar. People talk. Word gets around. You’re in law enforcement and let’s face it, not everyone is happy about having you there. This isn’t just about seeing one guy on the side. You’re putting your career at risk.”
“What I do in my free time is my own business.”
“It is. I’m not going to tell you what to do but this isn’t you, Skylar.”
She scoffed. “And you would know?”
“I knew Alex, and I worked with you for eight years. I think I know what you would or wouldn’t do. Especially when my life depended on it most of the time.”
Skylar sighed and scratched her forehead then pushed her lunch away.
“What do you want me to do, Scot? You want me to just forget that I lost Alex, that I lost my baby? You want me to hook up with one guy and hold BBQs on weekends and join the local knitting club? That’s not me.”
“You’re still reeling.”
“Yeah, I am and I get to decide when that ends.”
“You do.” He paused. “But how long are you going to punish yourself?”
She let his words sink in. Outside the boat she heard the sound of laughter, and then some tunes came on and she knew the frat boys were back.
“Look, I have to go.”
“I bet you do.”
“I do. I have to get back to work. We’ll speak later.”
“Skylar.”
“Yeah?”
“You might not work for the Marshals anymore but I will always have your back. You understand?”
She felt tears well up in her eyes, and she choked out a response, a short thanks before hanging up. Skylar sat there for a few minutes until she regained her composure. She got up and went over to the bourbon and unscrewed the top and brought it to her lips. Her hand trembled ever so slightly. She just needed a sip. Something to take the edge off.
The liquid poured down to her lips but she kept them closed. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was one last attempt by the person she was beneath the grief trying to stop her from going over the edge. A flashback of the day on top of the building came back. The phone call to say that Alex was dead along with several other marshals. The feeling as though her heart had been torn out of her chest. All her plans, dreams, and goals in life came to a grinding halt. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to stand without Alex but she’d found a sense of home with him. Another flashback of the conversation with her doctor telling her that she’d lost the baby. All within a matter of a month. If the grief of losing Alex wasn’t hard enough, that had sent her over the edge. Days turned into weeks as she hid herself away from the world, ordering in food, and finding herself at the bottom of a glass while only summoning enough strength to use the washroom. It was all too much.
She set the bottle down without taking the swig, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply counting to ten. A few more minutes passed and her mind turned off her own inner noise so she could focus on her work.
Only then did she venture out to go and speak with her neighbors.
Outside the sun had shifted hard to the west, covering the horizon with a deep orange. Blaring rap music came from the mammoth yacht as she walked down the dock with a look of determination. She was about thirty feet away when the same tattooed guy spotted her approaching. “Hey, hey, hey! Look who it is. Damn girl, you really should dump the threads, they aren’t working for you. Go jump into a bikini and hop on board. We’re just about to ramp up the party.” There were two others on board with him, each of them looked like they had spent more time pumping iron and drinking supplement shakes than actually studying.
“Which one of you is Gabriel Barber?”
“That would be me,” a voice said coming from farther back on the boat. A young guy emerged, early twenties, blond hair, chiseled jaw looking like he’d been stitched into his black T-shirt which had the same nKA symbol as the one seen on Matt’s ring. He had on cream-colored khaki shorts and blue sneakers. There was this smug look on his face as if he was untouchable or the kind of guy who rarely had to sleep alone. He took a swig from a beer can and tossed it.
Skylar reached into her jacket and pulled her badge, flashed it and boarded the boat without being asked. She observed all of their faces as she said, “Sheriff’s Office Franklin County, Lieutenant Reid.”
He put out his hand. “Whoa, don’t you need a warrant or something to board?”
“Why, you got something to hide?”
His lip curled up. “What do you want?”
“Matt Carr. Buddy of yours, right?”
He shrugged and his eyes washed over the other three. Gone was the swagger and in its place was a look of fear. She’d seen it countless times. It didn’t mean they were guilty of anything but they probably had some weed on the boat they didn’t want the law knowing about.
“We knew him. Yeah.”
“Knew?”
She noted how he spoke about him in the past tense.
He scoffed.
“Something amusing?” Skylar asked, her eyes flitting over the rest of them.
“I heard about the tragedy.”
“Tragedy. Right. How?”
“From a mutual friend.”
“That friend wouldn’t be Iris Bowman, would it?”
“Look, is there a problem here? Because my father has a real good lawyer who would be glad to answer any of your questions.”
“And I’m guessing your father also owns this yacht, right?” she said picking up on his self-entitled, my father is rich, can’t be touched attitude.
He looked at the others. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Skylar nodded and leaned forward. “Well Gabriel, you want to tell me what happened last night?”
“Aren’t I supposed to have my lawyer present?” He stuck his tongue in his cheek like he knew his rights and was going to make things difficult.
“Of course. But I’m sure your father doesn’t want to know that you’ve landed yourself in hot water and potentially could find his boat in storage while we go through the painstaking task of going over it with a fine-tooth comb looking for evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Murder.”
He snorted. “Murder? Here? You’re out of your mind. Shouldn’t you be interviewing businesses over at the Point?”
“We would if that was where he was las
t seen, except it wasn’t there. It was here. So, you want to start by shutting that damn music off and dropping the attitude?” She stared back at him waiting for a smart-aleck remark — it didn’t come. Instead he gestured with a nod to one of the other guys and a short guy with dark hair headed into the cockpit to turn off the music. While they were waiting, Skylar looked at the other two guys and noticed one of them was Dawson Hughes. He was wearing a baseball cap turned backwards and a pair of sunglasses but it was definitely him. She turned her attention toward him.
“Hughes, right? Matt’s friend.”
He nodded, his eyes bounced between her and Gabriel.
“Were you with Matt last night?”
“All of us were,” Gabriel said drawing her attention back to him.
“And you?” she asked Dawson not taking her eyes off him.
“I just told you. All of us were,” Gabriel said.
“I think Dawson can speak for himself. Can’t you?”
He nodded. “I was here with him. Yeah.”
“So what happened?”
He swallowed and the other three shifted position, Gabriel took a seat.
“Well…”
“Tell the lady,” Gabriel said snatching up another can of beer and cracking it open.
“We came over here to have a few drinks.”
“Really? I thought you were going to do that at the bar at nine?”
He looked as if he wasn’t sure how to reply to that. Again his eyes flitted to Gabriel as if seeking guidance.
“It’s spring break, lady,” another one of them said.
“And who might you be?”
“I can be anyone you want, darling,” the guy with tattoos said with a smirk on his face.
“Interesting. I’m pretty sure that’s what your cellmate will say when you’re in the detention center. What’s your name?”
He scowled. “Duane Daniels.”
“Well Duane, how about you take a seat over there beside…” She raised her eyebrows at the last guy whose name she hadn’t got yet.
“Jay Vasquez.”
“Right then, take a seat beside Jay,” she said. Then she gestured to Dawson to step off the boat so she could speak with him out of earshot of the rest of the crew. She was getting the feeling that Gabriel was controlling the narrative and she found from experience that separating parties usually allowed people to open up.
“Is that necessary?” Gabriel asked.
“That’s a good question. Let’s put a pin in that for now, shall we?” Skylar said jumping off the yacht and making her way down the dock behind Dawson. He was a broad-shouldered kid with thick dark hair that was cropped at the back.
He turned around and shrugged. “So?”
“So, tell me what happened.”
“Like I said. We came down here for drinks, to smoke a few cigars and well Matt had a few too many, threw up and so we left him here and headed to the bar.”
“You sure about that?”
He nodded, tucking his hands into his back pockets and trying to look past her towards the others. Skylar shifted so he couldn’t see them.
“See that camera over there,” she said with a jerk of her head towards the Vagabond. “That picks up everything that goes on down here at the marina. The owner is… a little, um, paranoid of a woman in town. Anyway, my point is… if what you’re saying is true then good chance we’ll see you all arrive and then leave without Matt. So again, are you sure about that?”
She studied his face and saw him swallow a few times.
He shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to look at the camera footage then.”
She nodded. “All right. If that’s how you want to do it.”
Chapter 8
The frat boys didn’t stick around. That’s because Skylar spent the next hour perched on the edge of her 50-foot catamaran staring at them with a bottle of beer in hand. They soon became frustrated and left. She waved to them, which only seemed to annoy Gabriel more. She watched him talking with Dawson as they made their way back to the parking lot and then tore away in a black 4 x 4 pickup. As the Vagabond was closed until the morning she’d have to wait until then to get Donnie to show her yesterday’s footage. She had a good mind to go over and snoop around the yacht, and had she still been a Marshal she might have done so. Rules were just the fine print in their handbook. No, now she was trying to do the right thing. They could probably get a warrant to search the boat if the video provided enough evidence to prove that Matt hadn’t left the boat. From there it would be a simple case of gathering prints, grilling the frat boys and this whole case could probably be closed.
Skylar made her way into her boat and sat there in the silence thinking about what Donnie had said. Small steps. She felt awful about the way she’d acted. It wasn’t professional and it certainly wasn’t what a friend would do to another. Scooping up her phone she placed a call to Ben Walker and waited for him to answer.
It rang several times and then went to voicemail.
After hanging up she tried one more time. Again no answer.
Frustrated but expecting him to not want to speak to her, she fished out her laptop and decided to do some research on the ring that Matt was wearing. She knew a little about fraternities. Many colleges and universities had them and what people thought about them varied depending on who you spoke to. On paper they were referred to as a social organization which offered membership for undergraduate students, and the affiliation continued long after they had left campus. But most knew that it was just a thin veil to cover up the wild parties, sex and drugs. They were shrouded in secrecy and each one had a stringent vetting and probational process knowing as rushing and pledging. Each one used a variety of Greek letters, ciphers, badges, hand signs, grips, colors and passwords in order to identify themselves, and each one stuck to specific etiquette, dress, manners and networking.
It was meant to offer brotherhood, leadership, scholarship and private rituals and a way for students to give back through community service and philanthropic activities.
Skylar pulled up the website for Florida State University and did a search for fraternities. There were sixteen listed. Alpha Delta Phi, Alpha Tau Omega, Beta Theta Pi, Delta Chi, Delta Tau Delta, Kappa Alpha, Kappa Sigma, Phi Gamma Delta, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Tau, Pi Kappa Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Pi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Theta Chi and Tau Kappa Epsilon. She clicked through each one searching for the symbol she’d seen on Matt’s ring. It didn’t take her long to find it. He was part of Pi Kappa Alpha. She glanced at a badge that had the words LOYAL ORDER. She spent a few minutes browsing through the main website and learning about the fraternity. There was very little she was going to learn about the ceremonies or recruitment aspect as most of it was kept secret. That was the appeal of it all. Taking those who were new to a university and drawing them into the fold with the promise of brotherhood for life. She knew that if they were involved in the murder of Matt it was going to be very hard to squeeze it out of them.
Skylar closed her computer and blew out her cheeks thinking over the case. The position of the body, the timing of it being found, its distance from the boat. Iris had mentioned a house they’d rented. She was about to turn in for the night when the phone rang. The caller ID read: BEN WALKER.
She answered it.
“Hello?”
“You called,” he said in a flat tone.
“I did. Um. Wanted to know if you had eaten?”
“I have.”
“Oh. Okay.”
There was a pause.
“Actually, that’s a lie. I haven’t. But I could use a drink.”
She smiled, realizing he was toying with her. “Look, there is a nice spot west of Highway 98 that is less than a mile from Carrabelle Bridge—”
“Crazy Hoggs BBQ?” he said cutting her off.
“That’s the one. You want to meet up there in about ten minutes?”
“Sure.”
He ended the call abruptly. She could tell he was
pissed and rightly so. At least he’d taken her call. She quickly went about taking a shower and changing out her sweaty work clothes. The restaurant, which was known for serving some of the South’s best hickory-smoked barbecued ribs, boasted of having been in business for close to ten years elsewhere and had opened up not that far from Hog Wild Bar-B-Q, another favorite. She’d eaten at Hog Wild but hadn’t had the chance to eat at the new spot.
As she was getting ready, the phone rang again and she thought it was Ben calling back to cancel. It wouldn’t have surprised her. Saying yes, letting her get ready and then dropping the ball just to get his own back, except it wasn’t. It was Reznik.
“Reid, I got some news for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Seems the hospital doesn’t have a record of Matt showing up there, however, their security surveillance does. At around nine forty yesterday evening, a red Honda was seen pulling up outside, and dropping him off near the front entrance to the emergency room. They didn’t hang around and drove off. He was seen staggering. He leaned against a pillar for several minutes before staggering away. That’s the last he’s seen.”
“Did you manage to get a license?”
“Nope, get this… they had their lights turned off. Seems they didn’t want anyone to see.”
“Well I guess that gives us a timeline to work with.”
“If he died between ten and midnight, that would have given him or whoever twenty minutes or so to get him over to the west side of town. Now being as Weems Hospital is in Apalachicola, it would have taken at least an hour to get over there by vehicle. He certainly didn’t walk it so someone picked him up.”
Death Blow Page 6