Killer Aboard: A John Otter Novel

by Sean Blaise

  John racked his memory, there had to be a clue. Ill-timed, he remembered Helen and shoved that wonderful memory aside for more normal times. He tried to remember again. His adrenaline was still in overdrive from the night's events and he was having trouble getting a clear image of his last interaction with Jennifer.

  Something in his mind clicked. The kayaks. He remembered now. Early morning. The quadpod as the professional crew had called them, Jack, Wayland, Greg, and Jessica.

  Why were they out kayaking that early? And Jessica had looked very ‘off’ rowing back from the island that morning. Something had happened right before he saw them that morning; John had no doubt. It also gave him his most clear suspects.

  John remembered something else. His last time speaking to Jennifer alive, had been in the chart room. She had wanted to tell him something. He was sure she would have but Jack showed up and she had stopped. The sight of Jack had stopped Jennifer dead in her tracks. And she had clammed up. Later that night, she was dead.

  Then, there was Greg’s reaction to hearing Jennifer was dead. Greg had attacked Jack. Almost like he knew Jack was going to do it. But what was the motive?

  That was for the police to decide.

  John had a fairly good idea now who the murderer was, Jack. The irony that he had risked Lubanzi’s life, to save a murderer was not lost on him.

  John had to decide what to do with his hunch. He realized that he didn’t know for sure. Falsely imprisoning a kid for a crime without any evidence, presented a host of other legal issues. No. He needed to confirm his suspicion. Greg was too angry and hiding something, Jack was too slick. John realized he needed to go after the know-it-all in the middle, Wayland. It was time he and Wayland had a chat.

  With his mind made up, John got up and opened the door of his cabin. He was stunned to see Lubanzi, standing there.

  “Captain, there’s something I need to tell you.

  Lubanzi pushed his way into the cabin and closed the door behind.

  “What is it?” John asked.

  “There is a gun on this ship,” Lubanzi began. “Someone on board has taken it, and I have no idea who.”

  Chapter 67

  Lubanzi sat down on the engineer’s bunk. He leaned back against the wall, his right arm in a sling.

  “What do you mean, there’s a gun on my ship?”

  Speak!” John demanded.

  “South Africa is a hard place. As you know.”

  “Stop. Tell your sob story another time to someone who cares. You’ve just said that I have a gun on my ship. Start with something useful, like how do you know that?”

  “I worked for a guy named Junior for a long time. I needed money. I did some jobs for him. Illegal shit. When I tried to get out, he said I couldn’t go. I did a job for him where someone got hurt. I was responsible for disposing of the weapon he used. I held onto it as insurance against him. He didn’t know I had it.”

  “You brought a gun that was actually used in a crime, onto my ship?”

  “Captain, I know.”

  “Wow. Between you and Smith, I have never had a worse crew in my life. How could you do that?”

  “I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Lubanzi there is always a choice.”

  “That’s easy for the guy from America to say. You don’t know what I have been through. We are from different worlds.”

  “Right is right, wrong is wrong.”

  “I didn’t come for a lecture Captain, I came to come clean. I wasn’t saved tonight for no reason. I believe it was to help you get everyone home safe. Now, what is the plan?”

  “Did you kill Jennifer?”

  John could see the hurt in Lubanzi’s eyes. “No.”

  “Now, will you tell me why you were forward in the students’ quarters right around the time she was killed?”

  “I was in the student’s quarters, trying to retrieve the gun. I hid it in the anchor locker. I had it taped to the wall. You mentioned going up there to check the rust the next day and I couldn’t risk having you find it. I went up there to get it before your inspection.”

  John realized Lubanzi’s story made sense.

  “And?”

  “The gun was gone. The tape was still hanging there.”

  “It didn’t fall?”

  “Captain. Someone took it. A person on this ship has the gun. And they might use the gun. That is why I am here. We need to find the gun.”

  “How the fuck do we do that?” John asked, slumping on his bunk.

  Chapter 68

  “How could someone have found the gun? I assume you hid it well?”

  “I don’t know how. Maybe when we did the ‘amnesty hour’ for contraband, someone went there to hide something and saw it? I honestly don’t know.”

  John went back to his notes and crossed Lubanzi’s name off the list of suspects.

  “Are you any closer to finding the murderer?”

  “I have a pretty good idea who it is. But now we have to assume that whoever killed Jennifer has the gun.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to think that there are some good students still left on this ship, and they are all not hardened killers. Some of them wouldn’t touch a gun; they would come to me and report it. Did you see Rosie and Monica’s reaction to us killing that tuna? I mean they almost puked. So, whoever grabbed it, needs it, and wants it. Which means we are outgunned on our own ship, thanks to you.”

  Lubanzi ignored the barb. He knew his career was over. At this point, he just wanted to redeem himself in the eyes of his captain.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We can toss the bunks, but whoever took it wouldn’t have hidden it there. If we let the students know that we have a loose gun on board, it will be absolute mayhem and we will lose control.”

  “Captain, if you know who Jennifer’s killer is, we should restrain them. Search them for the gun. You said it yourself, they are the most likely person to have the gun.”

  “I can’t just restrain a kid simply because I think they did it. The legal ramifications are huge. I have almost no proof.”

  “We have to do something. What if they decide to kill again?”

  “God damn it! Lubanzi, you don’t think that’s crossed my mind? I’m way out of my depth!”

  “Captain, tell me who you suspect and we will go from there.”

  John stopped pacing and sat back down. He relayed his conclusions that were leading him to Jack. He shared his suspicion that something had happened on St. Helena Island. Jennifer’s mood after the island proved his point.

  “You are right, we can’t imprison him on that hunch alone.”

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to John.

  “Wait, I didn’t show you this yet, since you were still on the list.”

  Lubanzi waved his hand dismissing the accusation. John rummaged through his drawer and removed the zip lock bag containing the note he had found on Jennifer’s bed. An idea came to John.

  “Go get the official logbook,” John whispered, laying the Ziplock bag on his desk and turning on the table lamp.

  Lubanzi went to the chart room and brought the logbook into John’s cabin, closing the door behind him.

  “I found this note on Jennifer’s bed. It’s a threat and whoever wrote it, seems to have followed through on it. ‘Keep your mouth shut or else’, can’t be a clearer message.”

  Lubanzi reached for the note. He examined it closely.

  John continued, “Every student on board makes a log entry when they get on watch and when they do the hourly checks. Therefore, we have a sample of everyone’s handwriting.”

  “If we match the handwriting in the logbook to the note, we find the person who threatened her. If it matches Jack, you will have enough to lock him up,” Lubanzi concluded.

  “Exactly, it’s enough evidence to justify it at the very least,” John said.

  John could feel his pulse racing. The sadness over Jennifer’s loss was now replaced
by adrenaline and his desire to find her killer. He laid the note down and dragged the flexible light over it.

  “What are you looking for?” Lubanzi asked peering over John’s shoulder.

  “My ex-fiancé loved murder shows. And I remember that one murder, hinged upon a letter. The show went into detail on how you find matching handwriting. Obviously, it’s a complex science but if I remember correctly, you look for pen pauses and distinctive letter formations.”

  John lined up the note next to the logbook and went line-by-line through the logbook’s entries. It didn’t take very long. Although handwriting analysis wasn’t his forte, the match was easy to find.

  John worked his finger along the matching logbook entry to the right ledger to find the name of the person who had made the entry. Then, John’s whole theory went up in smoke.

  Chapter 69

  “So much for my theory on Jack,” John said sitting on his desk.

  Lubanzi looked at the logbook again, comparing it to the threatening note. The log entry and note writing were identical.

  “There is no doubt. Greg made this note, so he must be our killer,” Lubanzi said.

  “The note is clear; he threatened Jennifer no doubt about that. But he also seemed to care about her. I just don’t know if he is capable of strangling her to death. Unless he did it when he found out about the…” John looked at Lubanzi unsure if he should mention the pregnancy test.

  “Found out about what?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m stepping over a line. This isn’t to be repeated. But Jennifer had asked for a pregnancy test from Smith. Maybe when he found out she might be pregnant, he had to kill her?”

  “Was she?”

  “Nobody knows. She didn’t mention it to Smith again.”

  Lubanzi shook his head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. If she was pregnant it ties him to her family forever. For a guy like Greg, her being pregnant would be a blessing, not a curse. I know a few guys who have knocked up a slumming debutante and had it made in the shade ever since.”

  “That’s a good point,” John replied. “Meanwhile, Jack, I have no doubt would kill someone if it suited his goals. And the look on her face when she saw Jack on the companionway stairs, was sheer terror. She was about to tell me something and she stopped cold when she saw him. The sight of Jack, put real fear into her.”

  “That would also explain why Greg attacked Jack when you said she was dead.”

  “It makes no sense. When I said Jennifer was dead, Greg immediately jumped at Jack like he knew Jack was responsible. It has to be Jack! Unless Greg was trying to throw us off his trail. Unless Greg was trying to give us a suspect. If Greg attacks Jack right away, of course we would think Jack had something to do with it.”

  “Captain, there is no doubt that Greg and Jack have something to do with her death. But you need verification. You need more than a theory. Wayland is the key. Break him and find out what he knows. Once we know what happened on that island, we can proceed from there. I will arm Charlie, Bill, and Smith with what knives we have. She will listen to me.”

  “Thank you,” John said. Lubanzi stood up and walked to the door. “Lubanzi, you know there will be consequences for bringing that gun on board. Even more so, if someone uses it.”

  “There always are.”

  Lubanzi opened the door, to see a breathless Charlie standing there.

  “Captain, we have a major problem.”

  Chapter 70

  John couldn’t believe his eyes. The deadbolt to Jennifer’s cabin was splintered and bent at an unnatural angle. Someone had pried the door open and the plastic sheet lining John had laid over the bunk was torn to shreds. The bunks had been thoroughly tossed. Whoever had done this was looking for something. The question was, what?

  “When did this happen?” John asked.

  “I have no idea. At some point, between the man overboard and the tanker leaving. We were all on deck,” Charlie remembered.

  “Who could have done this without us knowing? There are people in the Galley at all times now,” John asked.

  “It had to happen during the mayhem of the man overboard recovery. We were looking for Lubanzi and not watching this,” Charlie said with guilt.

  “Jack couldn’t have done this,” Lubanzi began.

  John agreed quickly and glanced in Charlie's direction motioning Lubanzi to be quiet. He was right, there was no way to remember who had been on deck at what moment during that mayhem. Anyone could have come downstairs and ripped open the door. They had to be looking for something.

  “We have to do a better job of preserving this evidence. From now on, everyone is confined to the aft part of the ship. I want the watertight door sealed from the galley into the forward students’ quarters chained, and locked. I will have the only key.”

  “It’s the killer, isn’t it? What were they looking for?” Charlie asked. John looked at Lubanzi knowingly. He was terrified that maybe they were looking for a gun.

  Chapter 71

  As Lubanzi and Charlie worked on sealing the forward watertight door, John went on deck to clear his head. The wind was still whipping but he felt like maybe it was relenting just a little bit. That or he was just getting used to it.

  The most powerful skill human beings have is adaptability. Ask any mariner worth their salt and they will confess that over time storms die down in their heads faster than in reality.

  That first moment a storm kicks up, there is shock. Your environment has been upended; the baseline has been altered. A sailor will adjust to the change. A few hours of a sustained storm and a sailor will make that the new baseline.

  If the storm increases, at first there is shock, then slowly it becomes your new norm. And slowly, you adjust until you can be in a hurricane, and if you have been in it long enough, that will become your new normal. Adaptability is a human being’s greatest strength.

  John looked at the wind instruments and realized the wind had not abated at all. He was just becoming accustomed to the level it was blowing at. John sat on the helm and watched the waves crashing over the bow. Beagle was still flying by any standards even with her reduced sail plan.

  John racked his brain for a plan. Even a bad one. He would settle for anything at this point, but nothing was coming to him. He was terrified. As the leader, he had to remain stoic and calm, to appear in control but inside, he was panicking. He had no idea what to do. They weren’t kidding when they said it was lonely at the top.

  One or maybe more of his students were criminals. That much was apparent. Maybe they were all working together, Orient Express style? John pushed the thought aside. It didn’t make sense. He ran through the facts again in his head.

  In all likelihood, Jennifer was killed by one person. The same person had most likely torn apart her room, looking for something. They were looking for either condemning evidence or something else, maybe the gun.

  The problem was that his most likely suspect, Jack, while he could have killed her, could not have torn apart her room. After all, he was fighting for his life at the time the room was ransacked. Which meant that there had to be two people, working together. Wayland? Greg? They were the most likely culprits.

  John tried to retrace the man overboard in his mind. He remembered Greg being present for the first part of it, sheeting in the mainsail. But he couldn’t remember where Greg was the rest of the time. And he couldn’t for the life of him, remember Wayland on deck at all.

  The mental fog replacing his waning adrenaline was clouding his thoughts. John couldn’t figure out where Wayland had been during the man overboard. There was only one way to find out. It was time for his talk with Wayland.

  Chapter 72

  “Wayland, how are you doing?” John asked, now that he had him seated on the engineer’s bunk back in his cabin.

  “We have a murdered student on board, we are in a storm with no communication off the ship. I have been better.”

  “Wayland, can we speak about St. Helena?”r />
  Waylands face brightened at the topic. “I found it fascinating, did you know the island was originally founded….”

  John held up his hand.

  “No Wayland, stop. Stop reciting the things you have memorized. I want to ask you if anything happened on St. Helena.”

  “Napoleon died there,” Wayland said matter-of-factly. John realized how unqualified he was for this manner of questioning. He recalled the sheet provided with Wayland’s application explaining his condition, a mild form of Asperger’s. The condition was characterized by repetitive behaviors such as answering questions factually and without emotional context. John had to try a new tactic.

  “The morning I saw you, Jack, Greg, and Jennifer kayaking, had you just come from the island?”

  Wayland's eye flickered at the question. “We were kayaking when you saw us.”

  “I know that, but were you coming from shore? Had you been to the island that morning?”

  “Where were you coming from that early, Captain?”

  John couldn’t tell whether Wayland was messing with him or not, but he resented it, nonetheless.

  “Getting parts for Beagle,” John responded quickly.

  “I don’t recall seeing any parts in the rescue. boat. I remember walking past the only mechanics shop on the island, and they had very distinct hours’ 10-3 Monday, 10-3 Tuesday, closed Wednesdays, repeating hours 10-3 Thursday and Friday. It was a Wednesday morning so you couldn’t have gotten parts from that shop, that morning.”

  John realized he was being outfoxed by the simple facts. He had to level with Wayland and hope that, in return, would do the same.

  “I was not getting parts; I was coming from a lady's house. I had sex with her.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  “Because Wayland, it didn’t seem an appropriate thing to mention to a student.”