Graveyard Bay

by Thomas Kies

  The action came up again as a camera captured the man inside the dry-stack building when he flipped on the lights. He had to be at least six foot nine and his shoulders were massive, his parka straining from the musculature underneath. When he moved, it was deliberate with a restrained sense of power.

  The man slowly turned toward the camera, staring into it, intentionally letting us see his face.

  Is he mocking the cops?

  He wasn’t wearing a ski mask like the others. His parka hood had been up over his head, making it difficult to get a good look. But while he stared up at the camera, he pulled the hood back. The man had on a black leather, form-fitting mask with slits for his eyes, nose, and mouth, around which were silver metal studs.

  Like something out of an S&M porn flick.

  Staring at him, my fingers and hands went cold again. I involuntarily recalled Bogdan’s deep, creepy voice, his tiny pig’s eyes, his thin lips, the way he’d threatened me and Caroline.

  You don’t know if it’s him, Genie.

  He went straight to where dozens of keys were hung from hooks on the wall. Without hesitating, he picked one out.

  Rick whispered. “Son of a bitch knew right where we kept the key.”

  “Who all would know that?”

  He shrugged and chewed at his lower lip. “Anyone who’s watched us haul their boat out of the water, I guess.”

  Then we watched as the man in black trod to the bay door and pressed a button. Soundlessly, the huge door slid open and he went back and got into the cab of the forklift.

  Rick clicked on his mouse and the scene changed to outside the dry-stack building again. As the massive forklift slowly rolled out onto the pier, the other four men reached into the back of the van in a frenzy of activity.

  My stomach dropped when a male with a thicket of salt-and-pepper hair, blowing wildly in the wind, and a slim female were dragged out, struggling, hands tied behind their backs, completely naked, cruelly exposed to the frigid temperatures. Held in the grip of their captors, they both shivered uncontrollably.

  Shaking from the cold? From terror?

  Both.

  I knew that overnight, the air temp had dropped to eighteen degrees. Even with the sun coming up, it was barely reaching the low twenties.

  The big man braked, parked the lift, and jumped out. He pointed to the concrete surface of the pier.

  Gun barrels held tight to their heads, rough hands on their shoulders, the two captives were forced to their knees. They were facing the camera. The male captive seemed familiar to me. He had a square jaw that quivered in the video, his eyes closed against the dangerous chill.

  I didn’t recognize the woman at all. In her thirties, she was athletically trim, her chest heaving from fear and exposure, her long, windswept hair twirled and wound around her head as if it had a life of its own.

  The big man in the mask pointed at them and appeared to be shouting. With no audio, it was silent theater on our computer screen.

  The deathly quiet in Rick’s claustrophobic office thickened the air. We were holding our breath, guessing at what was being said.

  Both captives quickly shook their heads in response. I thought I could see tears glistening on their faces.

  The man shouted again and angrily waved his gloved hands in the air.

  The male captive shouted in return, his head shaking wildly.

  Denying something? Pleading for his life?

  The man in the leather hood shrugged and pointed to the prongs of the lift. The four black-clad thugs wrestled both struggling captives onto the forklift prongs, laying them on their backs and wrapping heavy chains around their chests, arms tight to their bodies, locking them in place.

  They look so tiny on those huge forks.

  I heard Rick whisper, “Dear God, they musta been cold.”

  “Stop the video.”

  He glanced at me but then hit the Pause button.

  I got closer to the screen. The resolution of the video was fuzzy at best. I stared at the face of the male. Salt-and-pepper hair, lantern jaw, early sixties.

  Is that Judge Niles Preston?

  I stared harder. Try as I might, I couldn’t positively say for sure.

  I took a breath and put my hand on Rick’s shoulder, as much to steady myself as to tell him to hit the Play button. “Okay, let’s see the rest.”

  We saw Leather Mask climb back into the cab of the lift and power it slowly forward until it reached the metal stays at the edge of the pier. Then he pushed a lever forward and lowered the man and woman, their mouths open in silent screams. Just before being submerged, they both took a last gulp of air and sank into the icy, breathtakingly cold water until they’d completely vanished beneath the black surface of the bay.

  Rick and I both held our breath.

  Ten seconds.

  I knew from a piece I wrote a few years ago that if a human is immersed in water between fifty and forty degrees, while it doesn’t sound like it’s horribly cold, they go into cold shock.

  Twenty seconds.

  Any colder than that, the water feels like it’s burning your skin. Your body suffers from severe pain, and any clear thinking becomes impossible.

  Thirty seconds.

  You begin to lose control of voluntary functions, hypothermia is creeping in. You become lethargic.

  Forty-five seconds.

  The prongs of the forklift emerged from the water, and the two captives broke the surface. Once the forks were level with the pier, Leather Mask, still sitting in the cab, began shouting again, his gloved hands pointing and gesturing.

  The two captives, gasping for air, hyperventilating, chests heaving, shook their heads back and forth, their mouths open, screaming, sobbing uncontrollably, wailing, begging for mercy.

  Even though the video was soundless, I could hear them in my head.

  After a few more moments, Leather Mask shook his head in disgust. He dismissed the two of them with a wave of his hand. The forks were lowered again.

  Permanently.

  “Geneva!”

  My stomach lurched. Turning, I saw Mike Dillon in the doorway.

  “What the hell are you doing?” His voice sounded seriously pissed off.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “My job.”

  He turned his attention to Rick. “Turn that off right now.”

  The marina manager hit a button and the screen went black.

  “You and me, outside. We need to talk.”

  Up until a couple of months ago, Mike Dillon and I had been in a relationship. We’d made a very handsome couple. He’s in his early forties—a six-foot tall, good-looking guy with a face that’s angular, cunning, with expressive brown eyes and an easy smile. Plus, he’s smart and a hell of a cop.

  I’m nearly as tall, five-ten, blond, blue eyes, and I keep my weight in check and my muscles toned by working out and running on the waterfront as often as I can. I’d like to think that at forty, I’m still attractive with only a minimal application of overpriced cosmetics.

  For about ten months, Mike and I were dating, seeing each other for dinners, movies, and we even had sex a few times. We were friends with infrequent benefits.

  Then, in October, he’d abruptly called it off. Mike wanted more of a commitment.

  I didn’t know what the hell I wanted.

  He and I walked out of the general manager’s office and into the small hallway. Mike glared at me. “You know this isn’t how we do things. This is my investigation and I’ll give you a full report when I’m ready.”

  I hate to wait.

  “Who are the victims?”

  He gave me a look.

  I jerked my head toward Rick’s office door. “You saw the video?”He nodded.

  “Like watching a horror movie,” I offered.

  Mi
ke turned his gaze toward the office doorway, recalling what he’d seen. “Yeah.”

  “And what’s with that guy’s mask?”

  He shook his head. “Trying to scare the victims?”

  “I’m not sure how much scarier it could get. It was like he was mugging for the camera.” Then I asked the question again. “You know who the victims are?”

  Mike eyed me. “No IDs yet.”

  I moved closer to him and whispered. “The male looks a little like Judge Preston.”

  He glanced away from me. “We don’t have an ID on either one of them.”

  Mike knew Judge Preston. He’d testified plenty of times in his courtroom. If it wasn’t him, he could have simply stated that it wasn’t the judge, but he didn’t. Without actually saying it, he’d just told me that the male murder victim was indeed Preston. But there was no way I could use it in my story. When I wrote this up, it would be two unknown victims. “Any idea at all who the killers are?”

  “Nope.”

  Mike wasn’t saying much. He was still pissed off at me for sneaking a look at the video.

  I pulled my mittens out of my pockets, preparing to go back out into the cold. “Call me when you find out who they are?

  “Yeah.” He put his hand on my wrist. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t make mention of the video just yet. The tall guy, the one in the mask, he deliberately looked into one of the cameras. He did that for a reason, and I want to know what it is before it goes public.”

  “Yeah, I’ll sit on it, but when you ID the victims, you got to give me the names before you give them to anyone else.”

  He nodded and smiled at me for the first time that morning. “Deal.”

  I knew Mike. I wasn’t entirely certain he meant it. But I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I bundled back up and headed outside, glancing at the two bodies, now on gurneys, under gray sheets that had to be tied down to prevent being blown away by the wind. Dr. Foley was examining the dead woman’s fingernails.

  Slipping and sliding back to my car, I pulled the scarf back over my face and thought about what it must have been like to be lowered into that water, trying to hold your breath, your body screaming from the cold.

  I began to shiver again.

  Chapter Two

  As I put together the piece about the murders, I found it difficult not to steal glances at the digital clock on my computer screen. Nine-thirty—a half hour still to go before my meeting with Robert Vogel.

  The Sheffield Post was getting new owners. The sale would be final on January 1, but the transition had been ongoing for weeks.

  It hadn’t come as a surprise. Fairfield County was an extremely competitive media market. Outrageously affluent, the region was a ripe target for advertisers. Stamford, Norwalk, Danbury, and Bridgeport all had their own daily newspapers, and they were all owned by the same company, Hearst Media Services Connecticut, as were most of the weekly newspapers in the county.

  The Sheffield Post was the last of the independent dailies, solely owned by our publisher, Ben Sumner. He was in his late fifties and had been running the newspaper most of his adult life. Recently, two of our largest advertisers abandoned the Post for digital and broadcast options.

  We were hemorrhaging red ink, and Ben was burned out. He was throwing in the towel.

  No, the only surprise was that Hearst wasn’t adding us to their roster.

  As of the first of the new year, we were going to be owned by Galley Media, a publicly traded company with a profitable stable of twelve televisions stations, ten radio outlets, four magazines, and twenty-seven newspapers.

  Soon to be twenty-eight.

  The puzzler was why Galley wanted us at all. We didn’t fit their profile of acquisitions. They liked to buy newspapers in a geographic cluster and combine staffs to save money and squeeze nickels out of economies of scale.

  The nearest Galley property to Sheffield was over a hundred miles away.

  They were also reluctant to pursue properties in a competitive market. Fairfield County was overpopulated with newspapers. Add to that the newspapers out of New York and the news services over the internet. Our market was downright cutthroat.

  The official announcement had been made just before Halloween. Since then, not much had changed in our office, other than representatives from Galley visiting Ben almost daily and, one by one, interviewing all the employees.

  When Ben signed the deal with Galley, he’d made them promise to keep us all on staff for at least a year. The twist in that devil’s bargain was that it didn’t stipulate we’d all stay at the same job or at the same level of pay.

  As I sat in my office, one of the few glass cubicles in the newsroom, I couldn’t help but watch the clock. In less than thirty minutes, it would be my turn to be interviewed and analyzed, squirming under the Galley Media microscope. Although I was primarily working the crime beat again, I was still making an editor’s salary and working out of an editor’s office.

  I glanced out at the newsroom. A half dozen reporters were either on the phones or pounding out stories at mismatched desks and chairs. Some of the staff writers worked with laptops, and some had the old-style desktop monitors and keyboards. All of them had stacks of manila folders and newspapers on their desks and piled around them on the threadbare, coffee-stained carpet.

  Will I be back out there again? Will they cut my salary? How am I going to pay the bills? I’m barely getting by as it is.

  I’d been the daytime news editor for the Sheffield Post for over a year, right up until October. That was the time that Darcie Miller, my crime beat reporter, informed us that she was pregnant. It was also the same week that Ben put us up for sale.

  Ben thought it would be best to move Darcie to features and me to go back to working the cop shop. He’d take up the slack as temporary editor until Galley made their move.

  In preparation for my interview with Robert Vogel, I’d called some of my old friends who I’d worked with in the past and were currently employed at various Galley publications. I asked them about Vogel. He was described as a bloodless hatchet man, an empty suit, and a self-centered, corporate drone.

  Gulp.

  He’d be the one to decide my fate.

  I became queasier as the minutes ticked by. Almost to a person, every Post employee who had already gone through the interviewing process described Vogel as an evil little weasel.

  I took a deep breath, sipped my lukewarm Starbucks latte, and tried to put it out of my mind. Instead of dwelling on my meeting with Vogel, I worked on the piece about the double homicide at the Groward Bay Marina. It didn’t take me long, since officially there weren’t any IDs on the victims and I had promised Mike that I’d sit on anything I’d seen in the video.

  “Hey, I heard about the murders out at Groward Bay.” Looking up, I saw Bill McNamara—tall, thin, lanky—leaning up against the doorway. In his early fifties, he had a full head of prematurely gray hair and a silver handlebar mustache that I found very handsome and distinguished. He was wearing his usual natty attire of tan slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a green bow tie. If Bill were cast in a movie, he’d surely play an Englishman.

  I liked Bill. He’d been working at the Post for thirty years in ad sales, had an infectious sense of humor, and was our unofficial historian. He leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial voice, “It sounded grim.”

  I recalled the video. “Most murders are.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, he came in and slid onto one of my beat-up office chairs. “Groward Bay has a history. Want to hear? It might add a little color to your story.”

  “It’s a double homicide. That’s pretty colorful all on its own.” I took another sip of my latte and rested my chin in the palm of my hand, elbow on the desk. “But, sure. Dazzle me.”

  Bill leaned forward, glancing around to see
if anyone was listening. When he talked to you, you had to be patient and expect a bit of theater. “On July 17, 1779, Sheffield was nearly burned to the ground by English troops commanded by Major General William Tryon. It was one of a series of raids on the Connecticut coastline meant to draw Colonial troops away from the Hudson River.”

  I wondered where he was going with this. “Yeah, I grew up here. I heard about it in school.”

  He held up a finger, indicating patience. “Yes, but did you know that while the English were torching over eighty houses, two churches, fifteen shops, and seventy-five barns, our local militia rowed out to the two British ships anchored in Groward Bay?”

  “Oh?” I eyed the screen of my computer, watching the time. “I don’t recall reading about that.”

  “They were hoping that while the British troops were busy putting Sheffield to the torch, the ships would be undermanned. The plan was to board them, take possession of the vessels, and when the English troops rowed back to their boats, the militia would cut them down with their own cannon.”

  Nope, I didn’t recall reading about that in history class. Maybe I’d been out smoking in the girl’s room when the teacher had been covering that.

  “Unfortunately for the thirty Colonial militiamen in the two longboats, they somehow lost the element of surprise and were met with withering cannon shot and gunfire. It was a massacre. Every one of them was killed.”

  “Yikes.” I hoped that I’d kept my disinterest out of my voice. History had never been a passion for me and I wasn’t sure if this would have any relevance to my piece on the two murder victims.

  “For weeks, well after the English had left for other towns to raid and the fires in Sheffield were out, one by one, the bodies of those poor, brave militiamen washed ashore. Or to put it more succinctly, the body pieces. The cannons had made a real mess.” Bill scrunched up his face. “Finding arms or legs or torsos became such a regular occurrence that the townspeople temporarily changed the name from Groward Bay to Graveyard Bay.”