Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon 2014 Anthology

by Patricia Abbott

  It’s a long shot, maybe sixty yards, but I take a deep breath and blow. The dart flies through the air. Just when I think it might hit Amanda, the dart drops into the water. The boat motors away, picking up speed toward the breakwater, about half a mile away.

  Then I remember, we’ve got lakes in Arizona, and hell, I’ve been boating a couple times. I run to the docks, fast as I can, hobbling, and pick out a boat, about twenty feet long, with a huge outboard motor.

  I jump in, and it has the keys in it. It cranks right up, and I see Amanda and the three guys, far away, headed toward the open sea.

  I push that throttle all the way, full speed ahead. That big motor roars, the stern squats in the water, the bow lifts up, and I take off like a goosed duck.

  Then I remember, I forgot to untie the stern line.

  RIP-POW! The transom rips out, and the whole back end of the boat is left behind. The motor roars for a minute, back there clamped to a piece of wood, and then it coughs and sputters and goes down, glub-glub-glub. Steam rises from the water, and the motor and the transom sink out of sight.

  I feel the boat settling under me.

  As the boat sinks, the wreckage and I drift out into the main channel, and the current pulls us toward the sea. The wreckage slowly goes under, with me in it, until just the nose of the boat is sticking up, with me hanging on.

  Guess what? I can’t swim. Not a stroke.

  Just then, luck. A life preserver pops up from the boat—one of those old-fashioned ones they called a Mae West, ’cause they look like big hooters. I grab it and try to put it on but I can’t, flailin’ around in the water like that. So I hold onto the boat with one hand and the Mae West with the other.

  The boat sinks outta sight, and I am left with just the Mae West. I pass the breakwater and the current pulls me out to sea.

  A few boats cruise by. I wave and yell and the people wave back, laughing, as though this is all some kind of joke.

  I think I am done for, and Amanda is even worse off.

  About that time, a Coast Guard boat comes along. About twenty-five feet long, red and black, two guys in dark blue uniforms. Life preservers, too, blood-red, like the boat.

  I wave at them and they cut their engine and drift up next to me, upwind, so the breeze pushes them toward me. I am grateful for that. These guys know how to handle a boat.

  “What the hell?” one of them says.

  One grabs my arm, the other grabs my belt, and they hoist me into the boat. I tell ’em everything. The dead shopkeepers. The kidnapping. The race for the sea. Leavin’ out my guns, a course.

  I describe the bad guys’ boat, and they radio for a chopper.

  “They’ll take you with ’em,” he says.

  The chopper comes and it hovers over us and they lower a basket and I climb into it and they hoist me up.

  Inside the chopper, they put a headset on me, and I tell them about the kidnapping while we are zooming out over the ocean. We got two pilots, an engineer, and a rescue swimmer. Machine gun mounted by the door. Maybe .30 caliber.

  In the distance, we see a boat runnin’ fast.

  “That’s them,” I say.

  Soon we catch up to the boat, but it looks different somehow.

  This boat is a different color. Blue and white. The bad guys’ boat is green and white. This one has no flag, no Jolly Roger.

  “Wait,” I say, but just then the two guys on the boat come up with assault rifles, AK-47s, and start snipin’ at us. I hear bullets zinging past the chopper.

  “Engage,” the pilot says, and they aim that machine gun out the door and BLAM, BLAM, BLAM. Spouts of water lead up to the boat and across it. The two guys dive into the water and their boat lists to one side and starts to sink.

  “Drug dealers,” the pilot says. He banks the chopper and we fly out over the sea. We pass several other boats. Finally, I see the green and white boat with the Jolly Roger flag flappin’ in the breeze.

  We do several slow circles over the boat and I see Amanda on deck with the three guys. She is wrapped ankles to armpits in chains, with an anchor the size of a suitcase attached to the chains.

  She looks up and sees the chopper. So do the guys.

  I get excited, seein’ my daughter like that. I gotta do somethin’, so I lean out the door, wavin’ at her, tryin’ to tell her it’s gonna be all right. I lose my footing, and I fall. Holy crap, that is a long way down. I hit the water like a ton of bricks, get the wind knocked outta me, and I am underwater a long time. I feel someone grab me and pull me up to the surface. It’s the rescue swimmer from the chopper.

  He hands me the Mae West, and I hang onto that.

  I see the guys on the boat with Amanda. One of the guys aims his rifle at us and Amanda bumps into him, knocking him overboard. Splash.

  The other two guys on the boat start shooting at the chopper.

  “They can’t shoot back,” the swimmer says. “They might hit your daughter.”

  Amanda looks up at the chopper and then looks at us in the water. I see her make a decision. She rolls over the side of the boat, chains and all. SPLASH. Down she goes.

  “Wait here,” the rescue swimmer says.

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” I say.

  He takes a deep breath and disappears under the water.

  The chopper cuts loose with that machine gun, BLAM, BLAM, BLAM, and the bullets go THUD, THUD, THUD, and the two guys dive off as the boat starts to sink.

  There I am, splashing around, wondering what the hell is happening to my daughter. I picture her sinking like a stone.

  About that time a Coast Guard cutter shows up. It’s white with a big red stripe, about a hundred feet long, and there are crew members along the rail aiming guns at the three guys in the water.

  It seems to take forever.

  Then the rescue swimmer pops up, and at first I think Amanda is gone. But then she pops up beside him, and there she is, my daughter, alive and coughing and spewing water into the air and yelling bloody murder.

  “Son of a bitch!” she yells.

  “Over here,” I say. “Over here!”

  “Hi, Dad,” she says and smiles real big.

  Boy, am I glad to see that.

  Two weeks later, she holds a meeting in her store for the shop owners. Her lawyer, Kim Browne, gives a little speech. The upshot is, they all get their properties back, the two guys from the boat are going to jail for a very long time, and the tall Mexican is going to be deported. The man behind Day One Properties, Dick Wheeler, has disappeared. He’s on the lam, probably outta the country.

  Half a dozen of us walk down the block and around the corner to a fancy restaurant to celebrate. Amanda stands up and raises her glass. “To my dad. The old son of a bitch is good for something, after all.” Everybody laughs. She adds, “I wouldn’t be here without him.”

  It brings tears to my eyes.

  They give her a bottle of champagne, and later she is carrying that bottle as we walk back toward the shop, me with my cane.

  It’s dark out, and it’s foggy.

  Up ahead, a shadow separates from the alley.

  It’s the tall Mexican, knife in his hand.

  “I’ll handle this,” I say.

  “That’ll be the day,” Amanda says.

  The Mexican rushes at me with the knife. I sidestep and trip him with my cane. He falls and does a quick shoulder roll and comes up just as Amanda raises the champagne bottle high in the air.

  THUD! She hits him square on top the head, and he drops like a sack of potatoes and doesn’t move.

  We call the cops, and they take him away.

  Back at the shop, she says, “You know, Dad, I could use a partner in the business.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really,” she says.

  I don’t have any trouble hearing that.

  Back to TOC

  The Writers’ Conference

  Jeffery Deaver

  “Got a plum for you, Jim. A round and ripe plum.”r />
  “That right, Stan? The Bennett case? Tell me it’s so.”

  Friday noon in the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Department, in beautiful and some said historic Ocean Shore, California.

  Perched on a hill crowned by scrub oak, succulents and pine and dusted with fine sand, the Spanish-style ranch building dated to the ’60s and indeed featured a view of both ocean and shore. That is, Chief of Detective’s Stan Mellers’s office did, where the two men now sat. Deputy Jim Handle’s desk was on the other side of the structure and his scenery was parking lot, deer-trimmed shrubbery and, for occasional variation, deer.

  “Aw, Jim. Again? You don’t want that case. I keep telling you.”

  Handle settled his lanky frame into Mellers’s chair. It was a beige scene, all around. The rattan chair, Handle’s uniform, and his hair. Complexion would’ve been part of it too, if the detective’s face and arms weren’t so sun ruddy.

  “You know what, Stan? I do want that case. Want it a lot.”

  “I’m sorry, Jim. But—”

  “I know. I’m only on the force three years, not that long. But I’ve run homicides. Corpse to conviction.”

  “Gangbangers, using each other for target practice. Not CSI grade, Jim. Those’re what you could call Hondas. The Bennett case’s your Lexus. Or even higher ticket than that.”

  Handle wasn’t sure Mellers should be making light of a twenty-five-year-old woman abused and murdered, her body weighted down in the bay. But he wanted onto the case bad, so he kept mum on the taste issue.

  Mellers, too, shifted in his chair, also rattan but a swivel model. The chief was six four and outweighed Handle by sixty or more; the furniture protested.

  Handle: “I’ve told you, I’ve read every psych book and forensic text on serial killers they’ve got in the county library and on the internet. Most of them, anyway. I—”

  “Well, I know, Jim. I’m impressed. Really am. But, see, that’s a problem. Sally Bennett was one victim. Solo. Nada serial.”

  “There was that other missing girl. A year ago.”

  “She run off. Everybody says so.”

  “But Sally,” Jim persisted, “her death fits a profile. The pattern of the cuts, the sexual assault, the—”

  “Jury’s still out on both of them. Body was a mess and a half, y’know.”

  Sally had been in the ocean a week before she floated to the surface. The fact that her parents had something to bury and the SCSD had proof of a murder was close to a miracle. She might never have been found but for some sea creatures chewing on the ropes binding her to the concrete blocks sixty feet down.

  Though, as Handle had told his boss, at least the cold water of the Pacific had had a preservative effect. Corpses dumped into the balmy Caribbean, for instance, were often reduced to an indistinct food group in a few days. This fact was from his homework. Jim Handle frequently thought: I truly intend to get my head around this serial killer thing. I’m going places.

  “Just give me a piece of the case, Stan.”

  Mellers himself was running the homicide, as he did all important cases, but he could, and did, dole out portions of the investigation from time to time.

  The chief, it seemed, was genuinely troubled he couldn’t help out. “Staffing, and everything...Wilkins gone with that heart attack, the budget. The Squid Festival, the car race. I just don’t have the manpower I’d like.”

  This was true. Everybody knew it.

  Handle had debated asking their ultimate boss, Sheriff Joaquin Del Rio, if he could get onto the Bennett case. But Mellers had run the Detective Division for twenty years, longer than Del Rio had been in office, and he was a good cop. Handle didn’t have either the ground or enough bad judgment to go around Mellers.

  Handle gave up on Bennett and asked, “Plum assignment, you were saying?”

  “Yesiree, Jim. You’re going to like this one.”

  “What is it?”

  “A do at the convention center. And you, yes, you, my friend, get to head up security.” As in most cities nowadays, the convention center and attached hotel in Ocean Shore was considered a potential terrorist target, and a Santa Rosa deputy was frequently assigned to meetings there, supplementing the center’s security staff.

  In reaction, Handle gave a tiny nod like the bobble of a bobble head dog on the dash of a smooth-riding car, a Caddie—or, okay, a Lexus—idling at a stoplight.

  “Security.”

  “Don’t look so hangdog, Jim. It’ll be like a vacation. You won’t have anything to do, but stroll around the air conditioned halls and sip soda and eat funnel cakes. The convention? It’s a bunch of writers. How much trouble can they get themselves into?”

  At two p.m. Jim Handle parked his squad car in the convention center lot and made his way through the hot Santa Anna wind toward the front door, over a path beside the half-mile mile gray-sand beach, presently being caressed by waves from a Pacific Ocean living up to its name, which it didn’t always do.

  As a detective, Handle usually dressed down—jeans, collared shirt and sports coat. But the rule for security detail was to be obvious. There was some debate about the wisdom of this requirement. One theory was that seeing a uniformed officer would discourage a terrorist before even starting an attack.

  The other theory was that they’d know who to shoot first.

  He found the director of the facility, a harried man juggling the typical issues of events of this sort. He didn’t have much time for Handle, which was fine with the detective. He’d been concerned the man might micromanage and that was one thing that didn’t sit well with Detective James Handle.

  Then there was a fast meeting with the security staff in their office and, after that, the detective wandered off to check out the writers’ meeting.

  The convention center in Ocean Shore could hold only twenty thousand souls, give or take, which meant the big conferences went elsewhere; there’d never been an AMA or high-tech get-together here. The organizers of a cosplay anime event gave it a shot but there were too many Sailor Moons and Pokémons per square foot and the county fire marshal had to close the gathering down.

  But a bunch of authors? They didn’t but fill up a quarter of the center. This was largely due, Jim Handle supposed, to the fact that the attendees were part of a specialized group: they were all crime writers.

  Handle didn’t read much. Didn’t have the time, for one thing. He tended to put in long hours on the job and he had a family, which kept him plenty busy. Becky was taking a few years off her job as a nurse to raise their boy and girl, five and three, but Handle spelled her when he could. He also spent time out on his fishing boat, Pacific-worthy, pursuing his favorite hobby.

  And when he did read, it was usually for his own edification—like the criminal profiling and forensic books he’d reminded his boss about, trying again to talk his way onto the Bennett homicide.

  Still, even if he didn’t know much about the world of fiction, he enjoyed walking around the writers’ conference, looking at the exhibits and bookseller stalls and sticking his head in some of the sessions.

  He got a kick out of the titles of some of them. “Killing Your Baby,” for instance, which wasn’t, as he thought about infanticide, but a panel of writers griping about how Hollywood had made bad movies of their good books. He was going to ask a question—“How many of you sent your checks back in protest?”—but, being an outsider, decided not to.

  Another was “What Fifty Shades of Grey Can Teach Mystery Writers About Sex Scenes.”

  He passed on that one.

  Handle did, however, make a bee-line to “Serial Killing Update,” which presented the latest forensic and profiling trends on the subject. The lecture was by a former FBI agent from the Bureau’s behavioral profiling division, and he was well informed and a gifted speaker. Even though the presentation was for lay persons, Handle learned a few things, jotting notes on a pad provided by the organization hosting the event.

  Then back to work, cruising the hallways, looking
for potential terrorists or robbers, noting that the concession stand was closed, no soda, no funnel cakes.

  Around five p.m. Handle noticed many attendees gravitating to a large room off the main corridor. Inside, he saw people queuing in front of a lengthy table at which sat three men and two women. He turned to the attractive brunette he found himself standing beside and asked, “Excuse me, you connected with the convention?”

  “Me? I’m just attending. I’m a literary agent.”

  “Scouting out new talent?”

  “And meeting some of my existing clients. Deborah Tailor.”

  “Jim Handle.”

  “As in the composer?”

  “As in the drawer pull.”

  She eyed the uniform. “Anything I should be concerned about.”

  “Just routine.”

  “Sergeant Joe Friday said that just after the body appeared.”

  He smiled. “What’s going on here? This’s a book signing?”

  “That’s right. This’s the nominees’ session. Those five’ll all been nominated for the Tombstone. See, on the table there?”

  Handle looked where she was pointing and noted a black ceramic gravestone mounted to a wooden base.

  “That’s an award? That people win?”

  “The biggest writer’s award of the year.”

  “It comes with any money?”

  “Nope. All about prestige. But you win, you’ll usually sell more books. Use it for publicity.”

  “When’s the winner announced?”

  “The banquet tomorrow night.”

  “And those folks, the nominees, I’m curious, they famous?”

  “Not like movie stars or athletes. But they’re pretty well known in our world.”

  Tailor identified them and gave a little bio of each.

  Joe Devereux, early sixties, wrote a popular series of thrillers about a blind forensic detective in New York City. Seemed a little farfetched to Handle. But who was he to talk about credibility in entertainment? He and Becky enjoyed Phineas and Ferb with the kids.

  “He’s got the longest line. He the best writer?”