Caribbean Moon (A Manny Williams Thriller, Book One)

by Murcer, Rick

  No one is that good. There has to be something.

  Doubt clouded his eyes. There was nothing at any of the crime scenes that shouldn’t have been there. Nothing. In fact, two of the victim’s names, Juanita Henkle and Rebecca Tillerman, hadn’t shown up. They had no DNA record on file, so references to them came back “unidentified.”

  “Damn it! That wasn’t much help.” Manny cleared his throat and ran his hand through his hair.

  “Hey, you know we don’t get hits on all of them. That’s why half of the murders in America go unsolved. Unfortunate, but true.”

  Corner reached for the file. “Let’s see if we get any fingerprint surprises. It will probably be less helpful than the DNA profiles. Sorry Manny, but your theory isn’t looking too good.”

  “You’re right, so far.”

  Manny pulled open the folder and leafed through to Liz’s and Lexy’s reports. There were several identified prints. Most of them were staff, and the other list of unknowns had to be previous guests. They would check it out, but his face fell like a stack of dominos. No Peppercorn or any other name that was a likely link to the case.

  Frustration smoldered like an out-of-control forest fire.

  He flipped to the last, partial page and saw something that changed his mood. “Look at this.”

  Corner looked to where Manny was pointing, bent closer, and followed Manny’s finger.

  There on the last page of the report, after Lynn’s case summary, was a small tag to the file. It was like an afterthought. It appeared as if the tech processing the prints had decided at the last minute that the information could be important.

  The partial print on the stub Sophie found under lifeboat sixteen had been the last one processed and didn’t belong to a past or current guest. It belonged to someone else, someone Manny knew.

  The name that IAFIS had uncovered stared back at the two cops like a cobra ready to strike—then it did. Dr. Fredrick Argyle, Peppercorn's shrink, had been on lifeboat sixteen.

  CHAPTER-77

  “There’s no Argyle listed on the ship’s manifest,” observed Corner as he tossed the booklet on the bed. Then he rolled his eyes and raised his eyebrows the way someone does when the obvious slaps them across the face. “Well, duh. Of course there isn’t.” He stroked his chin. “I guess this explains why he hasn’t called us back.”

  “He has another ID, and chances are he’s changed his appearance. But he’s here, or at least he was. I can feel it,” Manny said.

  “Your ‘feelings’ are starting to bother me. What are you, some kind of psychic wannabe?”

  “Just call me Silvia Brown.”

  “Maybe I will,” the agent grinned, then turned serious. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t want to panic anyone, including the captain and Richardson. There’s no reason to get their panties in a bunch just yet. Let’s keep this between us for now.”

  The guest picture book that had been printed digitally from the ship’s database still rested on Corner’s loveseat.

  “Let’s take out all of the single, male pictures in this thing and pay a visit to our only witness. Since we put Jenkins down, there hadn’t been any reason to go over the pictures with Mr. Eberle.”

  “You mean since I saved your ass and put Jenkins down,” Corner retorted.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t see you walking through the Valley of Crazy Bastard to confront him,” answered Manny.

  “Touché. But it did feel good to see him hit the deck.”

  “Even better from my vantage point,” said Manny.

  “Don’t forget me at Christmas. I love presents.”

  “Okay. Let’s go see John Eberle.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Five minutes later, they were knocking at Eberle’s cabin. After the second knock, the old man stuck his head out the semi-opened door.

  “Mr. Eberle. Do you have a minute?” asked Manny.

  “Call me John. Sure, detectives. I was just fixin’ to go up on the deck and check out the lovely scenery around the pool, if you catch my drift.” Eberle looked at both the smiling detectives. “I ain’t dead yet, men, at least not all of the way.”

  “No sir, you’re not,” answered Manny, who remembered a saying he’d heard once: Don’t die until you’re dead. The old man was still living. Good for him.

  “We need you to look at some pictures. It may take a few minutes, but we would really appreciate it.”

  Eberle’s face came alive. “Glad to help. Come on in, I got me a little time.”

  The two detectives followed Eberle back inside his room and were hit with the pleasant aroma of mocha drifting through the cabin.

  “Want a cup of double mocha latte? I’m not supposed to have it but, well whatever, we’re all gonna die from somethin’, right?”

  While Eberle retrieved cups, Manny placed the stack of pictures on the table, purposely putting Jenkins on top.

  The old man put on his wire-rimmed reading glasses and slid into the chair adjacent the table. His wrinkled hand shook slightly as he pulled the stack of photos close.

  He hesitated at the first photo. “This guy is close, but a little different.”

  Manny and Corner exchanged glances and watched Eberle go over each photo with methodical purpose. The process was excruciating. Each second seemed locked in time, captured in a time warp. But neither he nor Corner said a word. This had to be all Eberle.

  After twenty minutes and hundreds of pictures, Eberle stopped. Manny held his breath. The elderly man was staring at a rugged, square-jawed man, who looked remarkably like Robert Peppercorn. Eberle studied the photo without blinking.

  “This is the son of a bitch, right here. You have to take away the goatee, but I’ll never forget those eyes. He even has the same, cocky-ass grin.”

  “You’re sure, John?” Manny asked, trying to stay calm.

  “Yes sir, I am. This is the guy.”

  Manny scrutinized the photo and didn’t see it at first. He traced his finger over the left cheek of the man in the photo. The make-up job was a good one, but not good enough.

  The small crescent scar was barely visible, but it was there. A souvenir from one of Argyle’s patients at the prison. An angry inmate, pissed because Argyle helped deny the con’s parole, had attacked him with a filed-down toothbrush and had sliced his cheek wide open. Anyone who had ever met Argyle knew about the scar. It was like his red badge of courage. He even bragged, to anyone who cared to listen, about how he had gotten it. Manny knew of it because he had worked with him a few times, especially with the Peppercorn case. And of course, there was the incident between Argyle and Gavin Crosby.

  He bit his lip. It all made sense now. “Shit.”

  “What?” asked Corner.

  “There was a thing between Gavin and Argyle a few years ago. I’ll tell you more when we get to his room.”

  The room number 6217 was stamped below the frame of the photo along with his name, Dave Prisby. It was just a few doors down from Mike’s and Lexy’s cabin.

  “Thank you, John, you’ve been a great help,” said Manny.

  He gathered up the pictures. They had their man and his room number. Sometimes being lucky and good worked together. Like when a witness was sure of what they had seen. Like John Eberle.

  “Detectives?”

  The two men stopped. “Yes?” answered Manny.

  “I have just one question. Do you think this lunatic would come after me? You know, for putting the finger on him?”

  “No sir. I think he wanted you to drop the dime on him,” said Manny.

  CHAPTER-78

  Richardson and his staff had shut down the elevators leading to the sixth deck and had sealed off the entrances in that section of the hall. They were doing a fairly good job of keeping this latest drama under wraps, but it wasn’t easy. People wanted to go to their cabins when they wanted to, not when it was convenient for the ship’s personnel. They didn’t like to hear about “minor problems that would be clea
red up shortly.”

  Standing outside of Argyle’s stateroom, Sophie raised her 9mm as she stood to Manny’s left, with Richardson and Corner to the right. Four additional security guards waited on each side.

  “I want the first shot. Boom, right in the wong,” muttered Sophie.

  “No shooting, yet, but if it starts, feel free,” whispered Manny.

  They had been situated outside his cabin for five minutes and hadn’t heard a sound. It was starting to look as if he wasn’t in the room, which Manny thought made sense. He seemed adept at saving his own skin and wouldn’t follow Jenkins’s lead.

  But to storm in could be dangerous. Argyle may have even set some kind of trap.

  Argyle had thrived on making law enforcement look bad. He wanted them to be like the blind leading the blind and to fall into the ditch. The arrogant bastard didn’t think they would, or could, ever catch him and somehow he had set up Jenkins to be the fall guy. Manny’s curiosity throbbed with how that had happened. How had Argyle controlled him? A thousand questions and no answers.

  It was time to get this show on the road. He slid the key card into the slot and pushed slowly, stopping when the door cracked about an inch. He examined the gap for any sign of a trip wire and saw none. He pushed a little harder and felt no resistance. The muscles on his upper lip twitched, and his hands grew moist, but he couldn’t risk wiping them.

  Then like some distant drum, he heard a faint sound resonating from somewhere inside Argyle’s room. Thud. The noise was muffled, but it was something. He held his breath, waiting for anything.

  For the next minute, he stood like a statue. But he heard nothing else. Only silence. The deafening kind.

  Manny had waited long enough. His instinct and lack of patience took over. It was time to get real, as they say. One glance toward the others was all it took for them to know what was coming. He shoved as hard as he could and dove into the room, flying low. Sophie dropped to one knee and held her gun with both hands. Corner stood above her, aiming high.

  Bracing himself on the floor, he scanned the room. No one and no thing moved. No gunshots or fiery explosion. No raging Dr. Argyle running toward him with a two-foot dagger in hand.

  The faint thumping he had heard from the hallway caught his attention again. It was louder, clearer, like a collision of plastic on glass. Poised like a gunslinger himself, he directed his weapon at the balcony door.

  He approached the curtain and pulled it open with a quick wave of his hand. There, dangling from the top of the balcony, banging the door whenever the breeze was strong enough, was a small, covered plastic jar. It contained two objects rolling around in clear liquid.

  Manny’s stomach lurched.

  Ogling back at him, through the crystal clear jar, were Detective Perez’s bloodshot eyes.

  Behind him, Sophie, Richardson, and Corner had rushed into the cabin. Sophie came from the bathroom as Corner slammed the closet shut, and they hurried to Manny’s side.

  “Good God!” moaned Sophie. “Doesn’t this guy ever stop?”

  She turned away, covering her eyes, as Manny opened the door and pulled the bottle down, quickly hiding it in the pocket of his shorts.

  “Where is the piece of shit?” begged Manny.

  Sophie flipped on the overhead light, but instead of radiance spreading through the room, the TV sprang to life. A small click filtered through the room as the DVD player switched on.

  The voice coming from the player was almost immediate. “Good afternoon, Detective Williams. What kept you?” Argyle filled the screen with a conceited smirk. “I have eagerly anticipated this meeting.”

  CHAPTER-79

  The doctor had changed. He’d always been tall, but not ripped. His neck was thicker, his face stronger. It was obvious he had spent countless hours in the gym. He might even have partaken in the crazy steroid world.

  Argyle had dyed his close-cropped hair shining black and shaved his salt-and-pepper Fu Manchu, but there was no mistaking the prison psychologist. Except for the scar on his cheek, his appearance was uncannily similar to Jenkins.

  It pissed Manny off that the narcissistic doctor was bigger than life on the screen. And only on the screen. He hadn’t bothered to attend this tenuous gathering himself. Instead, he’d sent his mechanical lackey to handle it. Argyle was smart, but part of him wondered if the doctor was gutless too. In a perfect world, the homicidal lunatic should be standing in front of Manny instead of hiding behind some taunting video. But Argyle had their attention, in control—right where he liked to be.

  “No doubt you are not singing my praises, but you know what they say: a prophet is without honor in his own home. Maybe you can appreciate some of my genius now.” Argyle flaunted a triumphant, but charming smile. “Maybe you, Detective, the rest of Lansing law enforcement, and certainly the FBI will think twice before disregarding research like mine as—how did Chief Crosby put it?—‘ridiculous ranting.’ He even suggested that I was the one who needed my head shrunk.” His eyes blazed with hatred.

  Corner reached over and paused the whirring player. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  Manny looked at Sophie and back to Corner. “Is that what this whole thing’s about?” he whispered.

  “What?” demanded Corner.

  Manny said a one-syllable expletive not used in church. “I said I’d tell you, so here goes. About five years ago, Argyle set up a meeting with prison leaders, two other shrinks—Drs. Martin and Orcutt—and invited police chiefs from most of Michigan’s largest police departments to discuss a new therapy he was sure would work. He said it would fly in the face of traditional dogma, but he was convinced it would break new trails in treating prisoners with certain disorders.”

  “Specifically, DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder,” chimed in Sophie. “He thought if you could treat and eventually control each distinctive personality or behavioral pattern, you could ‘cure’ the subject.” She shook her head. “I just said that and it sounded nuts.”

  Frowning, Manny continued. “He said that convention taught if you addressed the subject’s problems and traumatic experiences, got them out in the open, the rest of the other behaviors and personalities, so to speak, would disappear or at least be significantly diminished, and the subject wouldn’t need to ‘hide’ in other parts of their psyche. Argyle disagreed, citing the lack of success of those traditional therapies.

  “Martin and Orcutt agreed with each other that treating this ‘other’ personality would give credence to its existence and consequently make it stronger. In short, the treatment would in effect be creating a monster. With Argyle pursuing this line of thinking, his colleagues thought he was flat crazy.”

  Corner’s face twisted with irritation. “So let me guess, he thought someone like Peppercorn, who didn’t recall any violent acts or behaviors because he hid in the ‘other’ personality, could be cured by this new approach.”

  Manny nodded. “He wanted permission to work his theory on Peppercorn: to locate or to draw out and treat the other personality. He said that Peppercorn had a particular type of DID, something about people who suddenly find themselves in another place or time and can’t remember how they got there. He called it dissociative fugue . . . or something like that.”

  “I’m no psychologist, but that sounds dangerous. Messing with someone’s reality, I mean,” responded Corner.

  “The other two professional shrinks at the meeting believed Argyle was way out there, whacked, and that his proposed treatment would only mess up Peppercorn more. The big wigs from the prison and a certain police chief thought so too, and they flat out denied Argyle’s request. That police chief was our very own, grouchy-assed Gavin Crosby,” said Sophie.

  “Gavin wasn’t real tactful,” admitted Manny. “He completely went off on Argyle. He called him a ranting lunatic and suggested he had gotten his degrees from some witch doctor school in Dipshit, Africa. He told Argyle they have enough troubles with psychos on the street without him creating
one.”

  “So what happened?” asked Corner.

  “Argyle picked up his files and started to leave. Then he dropped everything and ran toward Gavin, taking a swing at him in the process. He missed, but the riot was on. I grabbed Argyle and a couple of others got a grip on Gavin. Things settled down, and Argyle called Gavin an imbecile, then left,” explained Manny.

  “The doc got two weeks off without pay and was given a warning that if anything like that happened again, he would lose his job and his license to practice in Michigan,” said Sophie. “If I remember right, the company that had agreed to publish his first research manuscript found out about his little meltdown and cancelled the deal.”

  “So, if we put two and two together, he went on this killing spree and somehow recruited Peppercorn to help, because he thought you all played a part in ruining his career, right?” said Corner.

  “Could be,” agreed Manny. “There’s something else, Eight weeks ago, Dr. Martin’s wife was brutally murdered in her bedroom, while Martin was away at a conference in Detroit. We thought she was a random victim. But it looks like Argyle got a piece of that one, too.”

  Corner reached for the PLAY button. “Let’s see if confession is good for the soul.”

  The screen sprang back to life. “Well, I hope you and Detective Lee have clued the FBI in on my past. Everything you have deduced is probably true. Bravo!”

  Argyle’s face remained controlled and stoic. “But you were all wrong. Dead wrong. I treated Peppercorn the way I wanted, and it led to my first meeting with Eli Jenkins. Fascinating man.

  “Each time Peppercorn came in, I would hypnotize him and converse with the complex and very intelligent Mr. Jenkins. I was impressed with his freedom from guilt and remorse, his sense of power. He cared for nothing but what he wanted. While it flew against everything I had ever believed, I started to see the simple, magnificent truth in it. Only the strong should survive. Everyone else should serve the exceptional among us. Don’t you think?”