Caribbean Moon (A Manny Williams Thriller, Book One)

by Murcer, Rick

  “That’s the truth. And I know the feeling.”

  It was good that Corner was a family man. Loved ones put the checkmate on all of the other pieces that could steal your sanity, your soul.

  Manny poured more coffee and saw there were only two cups to go with the small pot of espresso. “When are the rest coming? It’s going to be a little tight in here. Maybe we should go to the conference room.”

  Corner rubbed the back of his neck. “No one else is coming; at least for now. I want you to look at this stuff and see what you see.”

  Doubt billowed in Manny’s eyes. “I’m not the forensic expert here. I think we need Tucker and Alex to help us analyze this information. Not to mention, Richardson will blow a gasket if he’s not involved in this.”

  It was Corner’s turn to fill his cup. He studied the black liquid and tested the Vanilla Delight. “I’ll handle the others. I want to get your impressions. Your thoughts. I want to see how you interpret fresh info without anyone else’s input. Just like yesterday when I gave you the incomplete files. You saw things. I want you to look closer. I bet you do your best work when you’re alone, away from others and their opinions.”

  Manny paused and then slowly nodded his head. That was no surprise, at least to him. Things just seemed clearer when he was running solo. He did do his best work alone. The voices of the dead were easier to hear when it was quiet. They spoke, and he made sense of their petitions, their pleas. He didn’t know where Corner was going with this, but he was right. “If that’s what you want. I’ll do it. How much time do I have?”

  “I’m going to call a meeting at 6:30 a.m. sharp. You have until then. How much time you spend looking at the lab reports and pictures is up to you.”

  He rolled his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. “You’re a jerk. You know I won’t get any more sleep tonight.”

  Corner flashed his bright teeth and shoved a piece of cake in front of Manny, tossing him a fork.

  “We won’t have the blood DNA and fingerprint results until late morning after we get into Aruba. That information is being sent via courier from my office. But you have all of the pictures and updated reports from Liz’s file, including new photos, and the murders in San Juan, St. Johns, and Dominica. Plus, you have the semi-completed files involving Lynn Casnovsky and the attack on Detective Perez. It was as good as the San Juan Police could do on such short notice.”

  Corner hesitated and picked up another, much thinner folder carrying the FBI seal. Manny watched him turn it around in his hands nervously.

  “What?”

  “Max put together the preliminary pictures and report from Mike and Lexy’s room. They’re in this one. Like I said before, it’s not pretty.”

  The two cops locked eyes, and Corner asked him the most simple of questions. But it chilled him to the core.

  “Are you ready for it?”

  The same anguishing, gut-clenching feeling from the early evening came snarling back. Barbed wire seemed to have wrapped itself around Manny’s insides.

  Hell no, I’m not ready for it.

  How could anyone be ready for the horrible images that lay hidden in that unholy file? But what choice did he have?

  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. He hated the phrase, but it applied here. He took the file from Corner’s hand.

  “By the way, we still haven’t heard back from Dr. Argyle about Peppercorn. His secretary is supposed to get back with us in the morning. He must have his cell phone turned off because we have been trying to call him too.”

  Manny nodded, stood up, and tucked the thick files under his arm.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your cake?” asked Corner.

  “Knock yourself out. I’ll see you at six.”

  He left the agent’s room and headed back to his.

  He greeted the guards and stepped into his cabin. He didn’t know what was going on in Corner’s mind, but decided he didn’t care. He liked getting the files first. It was going to be a long night, but it was the least he could do.

  Bending low, he kissed his still sleeping wife, then sat down to catch a killer.

  This kind of work made him more . . . alive.

  Cautious enthusiasm bordered his thoughts. They were getting close. Things were ready to pop. He could feel it. They had a witness and this information, plus they were in a closed environment on the ship. The noose had to be tightening for the madman.

  He would reflect later on just how accurate his intuition had been. In just a few, short hours all hell was going to break loose aboard the Ocean Duchess.

  CHAPTER-69

  Louise’s slow, metrical breathing was the only sound drifting through the cabin while Manny turned each page of the thick files with methodical purpose. He tried to coax the cryptic stories, hidden in each case, to a measured, resolute rhythm. Like a conductor reaching the part of the concerto where tempo was everything. The inflection identified what the composer wanted to unveil. But the music’s effect on the audience was almost always a mystery. Even to the skilled leader of the band. The same was true with an evidence file. It would sing, but could he hear the melody? Could anyone?

  For Manny, the challenge was to put an emotion and a cadence with each picture, each report. He wanted to feel how the killer felt, how the perp thought of himself: Mozart or Led Zeppelin. Did he hate or did he, in his own perverted way, love? Did he see himself as an angel of God? One of Evil’s dominions? One thing was sure—the madman enjoyed the fear element of his ritual. He wondered what made this killer tremble. What caused him to shudder, to piss his pants in fear? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. But if he had to bet, he suspected no fear cruised this man’s core and compassion was only a word in the dictionary.

  There really wasn’t anything new in the information provided for the first four victims. Everything looked virtually the same. Orderly. Precise. Each body found with the black rose in place. Each throat wrecked and upper bodies torn to shreds. It all meant something. But what? He wanted them to speak, to reveal their stories of living, of dying. He needed to hear clearly when the concert began.

  While turning the pages, he thought how hard it was at times to equate the pictures and reports, wrapped in official government file folders, with a once living, feeling person. No problem with that tonight, however. Liz, Lex, and the others would always be more than the contents of these miserable files. Much more.

  Manny pressed his finger against his lips and wondered what was inside that he hadn’t seen the day before. There had to be a screw-up, no matter how trivial. No one is that good. That perfect. Every one of these bastards, somewhere along the line, makes a mistake.

  After the third time through, he slammed the files on the table in disgust and frustration. He wasn’t seeing it. There was something else here. He knew it. Could feel it. But what? Then again, what did he expect at 4:30 in the morning? Miracles? Walking on water wasn’t in his repertoire.

  He ran his hand through his hair again and tasted from the white mug. It didn’t smell or taste as good as the vanilla espresso that Corner had, but it did the trick.

  Lynn Casnovsky’s file was next. He leaned in to get a better look at each graphic photo. Lynn had bruising on the left side of his face that showed definite signs of knuckle imprints. His jaw had been broken in four places, antimortem. He must have been in serious pain, and Manny felt the empathetic tug at his heart.

  There was some bruising on the other side of his face, indicating that it had been squeezed or grabbed with tremendous pressure. That fit with the fact that his neck had been snapped like a twig in a storm. There were other postmortem injuries. A few broken bones earned from being thrown over the balcony and bounced off the lifeboat. There were also several places where the body had been stripped of tissue by sea scavengers. Not pretty.

  A rookie detective could recognize what had happened here. The killer had hit Lynn in the jaw, maybe putting him out, then stole his life with a violent twist from behind.

 
; That took raw strength or knowledge. But he didn’t believe this guy had any military training. His best guess fortified what Tucker and Alex both thought; he killed with pure strength. Not someone to go toe-to-toe with.

  The ocean had washed away anything else that Lynn could tell them. No fibers. No blood traces. No hair or epithelium to process. Just a clean, ocean-soaked body.

  Manny tilted away from the table and thought about Sophie’s affair with the dead man. He knew neither one of them would have guessed an ending like this.

  Well no shit, Sherlock.

  People wanted to manipulate the whens, the hows, and the whats—it gave them a sense of control of their destiny. If he had figured one thing out in life, it was that no one had command of anything. Control was some cruel illusion that fate hung overhead like just-out-of-reach fruit. Dauntingly close, but impossible to touch. Maybe it was a good thing that God ultimately controlled eternity. At least there would be justice.

  He closed Lynn’s file and gazed at the dark file that hid the secret to Lexy’s last minutes alive. It whispered his name, and he heard it, all too clearly. Like Sirens beckoning the sailors of a lost ship.

  He locked his hands behind his head and gazed intently at the curtain-covered terrace door. Small rays of early morning sun eluded the flat edges of the drape.

  Am I ready for it?

  If not him, not now, then who would Lexy speak to?

  After a few moments, he began to open the file and then pulled his hand away. Déjà vu put up a roadblock that he wasn’t sure he could get through. Opening Lexy’s file reminded him of when he’d had to gather enough courage to review his late partner’s homicide file. He’d put it off for two weeks, and when he’d finally opened the cover to Kyle Chavez’s file, he hadn’t eaten for two days afterward.

  Memories of his ex-partner’s death had faded mostly. But like old scars, the wounds heal, but things never look quite the same.

  Kyle still represented recollections of a past that Manny was helpless to change, but maybe that’s how it was supposed to be. Maybe men like him weren’t supposed to forget. It’s what drove them.

  The Guardian of the Universe took a deep breath and opened Lexy’s folder.

  CHAPTER-70

  Sophie sat on the edge of the firm bed and laced her blue-and-white Reebok cross-trainers. She was dressed in jogger’s shorts, a white tank top, and a fanny pack, decorated with the LPD insignia.

  A Carousel cruise line baseball cap held her long hair in place. Randy had gotten the hat for her at one of the lavish shops in the ship’s mall. He could be so sweet.

  She ran slim fingers around the edge to make sure it was on straight, and was struck with an odd thought. She hadn’t gone shopping on the ship. Not one iota. Usually she and shopping were as close as sun and light. That’s what she got for being Manny’s partner. He owed her for that one, big time. A new, expensive pair of shoes would work.

  A wide yawn came to visit while she stood and stretched her legs and arms. She was tired, and the last couple days had taken something out of her. But she always got up before 5:30 and ran three miles. Always. She thought of the old milk commercial.

  It does a body good.

  She glanced over to her husband. Small snoring sounds filtered through the thick pillow that partially covered his face. At least one of them was getting some sleep.

  The 9mm felt heavy as she patted her fanny pack, but she couldn’t leave it behind.

  You never know when you might get to shoot the balls off a serial killer.

  She adjusted the barrel and snuck out of the stateroom.

  One of the security guards asked her if she wanted company. She shook her head and flashed the weapon. “This little darling is all I need, but thanks.”

  With that, she headed for the jogging track on the Sun Deck. She knew it was going to be about the only time, at least until they docked later in Aruba, that she would have to herself. After what had happened last night, the investigation was going to intensify, if that were possible. Especially if Manny and she had anything to do with it.

  Poor Lexy. Poor Mike. Poor Gavin and Stella. She lowered her head. Someone needed to remind her again why she wanted to be a cop.

  The information from the FBI labs would be in Oranjestad this morning, and she was sure that the good-looking Agent Corner (and he was good-looking) wouldn’t hesitate calling them together.

  He couldn’t waste any time. Who knew when the killing machine would strike next? She had never seen anything like this guy and never wanted to again.

  Sophie stepped from the elevator and stretched her calves and thighs, watching the red sun peek over the horizon. She felt its immediate impact on the already warm, humid air and took a deep, sweet breath. It just plain felt good. Maybe there is something to that old saying that things would always be better in the morning.

  So far, this daybreak was the complete antithesis to the previous evening. It had to be—because nothing felt good about last night.

  The collective torture of the Crosby family danced vividly in her mind. No one should have to cope with the death of a child. It wasn’t natural, not the way things were designed. And in a real sense, Lexy had been Gavin and Stella’s child.

  Lexy. Sophie had always thought herself tough as nails and able to handle most things. She had seen plenty in the back streets of Chinatown in San Francisco. But seeing Lexy like that, like some kind of slaughterhouse mistake, had gotten to her, really gotten to her. The truth of the atrocity was driven home even deeper as she sat with Gavin and Stella. They wore identical, vague, glassy-eyed expressions. These kinds of things didn’t happen to them, their family.

  The quick sob came out of nowhere and surprised her. Lexy had been such a good kid. She had been a perfect match for Mike. But that train had hit the tracks.

  Hot anger flared as she began her thirty-lap trek around the tan oval that circled beneath the weather towers and wind indicators.

  With each lap around the deserted track, Sophie picked up speed, trying to exorcise the images from the previous night. Maybe even some of the ones that Lynn and she had hidden together. She steered away from thoughts of Lynn. There was enough to deal with today.

  Her skin glistened in the early morning air as she pushed herself near the limit.

  Who said sweating was bad for women?

  She was so lost in her own world that she didn’t notice the big man pull up beside her until she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

  He was outfitted in a black tank top and army fatigues. His long, powerful legs loped stride for stride with her.

  “It’s a beautiful morning, don’t you think, Detective Lee?”

  Her head jerked to the right. “How do you kno—?” Sophie stopped breathing. He had changed. He was in astonishing shape, but it was him. Robert Peppercorn was no longer missing.

  She slammed on the brakes and reached for her zipped-up Glock, but she never really had a chance. He sprayed the chloroform directly into her face.

  *****

  Jenkins lifted the small woman over his shoulder like a rag doll and headed for the food court. His body language revealed just how pleased he was with himself.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  He turned to see First Officer Pena, dressed in jogging gear, running toward him from some twenty feet away. He raised his left hand and pulled the trigger of the Smith and Wesson. Pena’s white shirt turned to crimson as he hit the deck, dead from a shot to the heart. A toothy grin spread across Jenkins’s damp face.

  Oh, what the passengers on the Ocean Duchess will write in their cruise journals after this day is over.

  CHAPTER-71

  The darkened room squeezed him. Not because the walls were closing in, but because the entities surrounding him, touching him, embracing him, were growing. Manny sensed them changing, evolving, and he was afraid.

  The absence of light in the room ordered him to feel lost, forsaken, and caused his fear to escalate. The bl
ackness enveloped all reason and logic and kept them isolated from him like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

  As the objects pressed closer, he realized he couldn’t move. He could smell the aroma of rank death as hot, putrid breath scampered across his face. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Fright whirled closer.

  What the hell is this? Why am I here?

  As if to answer his questions, out of nowhere and everywhere came a deep, deafening voice booming directly into his brain. “It’s all your fault. The reason that everyone around you is dead is because you let them die. If you had been any kind of cop, they would ALL still be breathing. Some Guardian of the Universe.”

  Then the voice changed gender, and it was Liz’s turn.

  “Thanks loads, Williams. I wanted to do this cruise thing, but you screwed that up and now I’m dead. But you’ll pay. Starting with Louise, she’s the next to die.”

  A small movie screen sprang to life directly in front of him. The picture was as clear as life. He watched in horror as Lexy Crosby pointed a Glock 19 at Louise’s temple. Lexy turned toward Manny, showing off her mutilated face as a vivid reminder of her fate. He screamed to warn his wife. But the loud report blocked out everything.

  His body jerked as his senses spiraled back to him. The next loud knock brought Manny up from his chair like a jack-in-the-box—a terrified jack-in-the-box. He looked at his watch: 6:15.

  He wiped at the moisture on his face and felt his pulse start to calm. He shot a quick glance at Louise, saw the faint rising of her chest, and knew the nightmare had lied. But it was still fiercely alive. He tried again, but couldn’t quite shake the helpless binding that some nightmares bring with Jacob Marley-like chains. He took another deep breath and relaxed his shoulders. Better.

  Wow. He had fallen asleep after he closed Lexy’s file. He wanted the rest, but that kind of sleep he didn’t need. No one did.

  The knocking intensified. Manny grabbed his gun and went to the door. A fast look through the security peephole was all he needed to become fully awake. Adrenaline pushed through his just-settled body, and the pounding in his chest returned.