Echoes of Evil

by Heather Graham

  It would be impossible for him not to want to know answers.

  And it was more than that.

  It was Dakota McCoy.

  * * *

  Waking up was painful.

  Sleep had eased the loss of Cliff Bullard; morning brought back to her the fact that it was all far too real.

  She had just showered when the phone rang.

  It was Rosy. She spoke in a teary whisper, breaking Kody’s heart into even smaller bits.

  “Can you—can you come over? Oh, I forgot...the museum. You need to be working.”

  “No, I need to be with you,” Kody assured her.

  “But...so much is happening with that wreck they discovered. Oh, Kody, that poor man. And my poor Cliff...”

  “I’ll be right there, Rosy,” Kody promised.

  Hanging up, she quickly dressed and went on downstairs.

  Coffee was brewed; the captain was excellent at pushing the on button. He couldn’t manage the pouring of a cup of coffee, but he could manifest strongly enough to push buttons.

  “How are you?” he asked her.

  “I’m okay. But I do have to go see Rosy. Cliff was really the longtime resident here. Well, you know that. You know almost everything.”

  “Not at all. I know what I’ve observed over time. And, you know that even dead, I actually have to be somewhere to have observed what went on there. I do know that Cliff was an amazing man, dearly loved down here. And his poor wife must be devastated.” He gave her a sad smile. “The man was a fine musician. Through the years, I spent many a night wandering down Duval to Front Street and then heading in to hear him. He will be missed.”

  Kody nodded, pouring coffee and drinking it quickly, looking at him.

  She hesitated. “Captain, can you...feel him, or sense him?”

  “No—if his spirit has remained, he hasn’t dropped by this house. But I do think I’ll do some wandering myself.”

  She nodded. “I know it sounds extreme, but...it wasn’t right.”

  “I’ll see what I can see. And hear—and sense,” he assured her. As if to prove his point, he tipped his sweeping hat, and left.

  “Thank you,” she called after him.

  She finished her coffee quickly and headed out. Rosy’s house was on Simonton; it was an easy walk. Kody owned a car, and she liked to drive, but there was no sense driving when it was just a matter of blocks. It was the same with the museum. Parking was always at a premium in Key West, and she was just accustomed to walking when places were close.

  As she started out, she realized that she hadn’t called Colleen, her assistant and helper in all things at the museum. She pulled out her phone.

  Colleen was amazing. But she was shy. She was an incredibly hard worker, but she had little faith in herself as a woman. She never dated; though, in truth, she was attractive enough. She had a way of drawing in on herself and wearing clothing that did little to flatter her form.

  “Kody!” Colleen said, answering the phone. “I’ve seen the news, and right off—you must not worry. I will take care of everything. I don’t know how busy we’ll be anyway on a Monday morning. I’ll be working on displays and archiving all the artifacts. And greeting guests we might have! I’m already here—seriously, you must not worry. And I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Thank you, Colleen. What are you doing in there so early?”

  “I—I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “Oh, did you hear...last night?”

  “No, this morning. When I turned on the news. A dead man on the ship! Police investigating—and then...well, poor Cliff. There’s little I can say...”

  Colleen sound strangely disconcerted. Organization and a calm look at any situation were usually her forte.

  “Are you all right?” Kody asked her.

  “Of course, of course. I’m fine.”

  She was lying, but Kody would have to find out why later.

  “I’ll be in to see you by the late afternoon, okay?”

  “You don’t need to—”

  “I’m restless. At some point, I’ll be there.”

  “Oh...okay. Whatever you like. But I want you to know that I am here for you.”

  “Thank you,” Kody said softly. She hung up, then picked up her pace, steeling herself to go see Cliff’s widow.

  * * *

  “Where are we going?” Brodie asked. “The morgue?” He tried to keep his voice flat. Sometimes, if a dead man’s spirit remained, you could actually feel it by touching the body.

  Few spirits, however, hung out at a morgue. Too painful. Except once he’d had a case in which the deceased in question had been a detective. The detective had actually remained to watch his own autopsy—he hoped to solve his own murder and then lay it all out to those in authority—as soon as he could find someone with whom he could communicate.

  Easiest case Brodie had ever worked. Sadly, it didn’t usually work that way.

  “Yes,” Liam said. “They haven’t gotten to start on Cliff yet. Everyone is assuming that it was a natural death, one way or another.”

  “One way or another?” Brodie said.

  “Heart attack, massive stroke...we don’t really know anything yet.”

  “Anaphylactic shock?” Brodie suggested.

  “Maybe,” Liam said. “But it seems obvious that it was natural. You don’t think that it was?”

  “He showed no signs of an imminent heart attack.”

  “Well, we need a complete autopsy on Cliff, which won’t be now. At least we’ll find out about our victim on the boat.”

  The drive up took almost an hour. By that time, Brodie learned that Liam and his wife, Kelsey, were doing well, still living at the Merlin estate Kelsey had inherited from her grandfather, who’d left a houseful of incredible artifacts, many of which would now find their way to Kody’s museum. Without explaining the entire dilemma, Brodie talked about his current reason for being down in the Keys where the warm water and time in the sun and sand might help him determine himself if he wanted to stay on his own, or join the FBI, as his brothers had done. Liam, he discovered, also had two brothers.

  He felt that, although they chatted almost as two old friends who had been close for years, they were both sticking to small talk and skirting around getting too deep into anything. It felt odd to Brodie, but it made the drive pass quickly.

  The medical examiner on duty for the case of the body in the water was Dr. Clyde Bethany, a short man with neatly cropped snow-white hair and an easy manner. They quickly learned that the man in the water had been somewhere between his late thirties and early forties. He’d been in good shape with no obvious health issues. There were defensive bruises on his arms—he had most probably fought his attacker. A wallop on the head had certainly stunned him, but not killed him. Cause of death had been strangulation, performed most likely with an electrical cord or something similar. “We’ve taken fingerprints and done all the things we can do to find out his identity,” Dr. Bethany said. “This isn’t going to help much—his last meal was grouper, probably consumed less than an hour before his death. I’m going to suggest therefore that he was killed in Key West.”

  “Impossible for our murderer to have gotten him right after dinner, then down to the Keys, and then down into the water, if he’d been farther away,” Liam said.

  Brodie kept silent; he’d been asked to join as a courtesy. But he noted Liam touching the body, setting his hands on one of the bruises.

  He’d made a point of doing that himself. Certainly, the spirit of the man was not there—not haunting the bright lights of the morgue, witnessing the last chance for his remains to speak.

  But Brodie couldn’t forget the dark shadow he had followed on the shipwreck.

  Brodie had a theory. “By what you’re saying, Dr. Bethany, he was probably struck, then he went down, an
d maybe managed to roll. The attacker came at him when he was on the ground. This man tried to fight him off, but the attacker had weight and leverage on him, slipped the cord around his neck. There’s bruising and scrapes here on his fingers, so it seems he tried hard to fight against the cord but wasn’t able to dislodge his attacker.”

  “I’d say that’s a good example of what might well have happened,” Bethany agreed. “He fought, so the attacker didn’t just get him down with the blow to the head. Some kind of hard object—I have an impression, but I haven’t determined yet what might have been used to deliver the blow. Florida Department of Law Enforcement people, sheriff’s office, and of course, Liam, your office, will receive my findings. The lab might have better luck in determining the object used.” He moved the victim’s hair around. “Whatever it was, the object was broad. I keep thinking something like a restaurant napkin holder, a large paperweight—does anyone still have paperweights? Yes, actually, I have one. I’m not a spring chicken these days, so...yep, I have one. But not as big as this would have been.” He looked at Liam and indicated Brodie. “This is the man who discovered our victim?”

  Liam nodded.

  “I was diving with the Sea Life crew,” Brodie explained.

  “I see. Must have been quite a shock. And yet here you are.”

  “Brodie’s a PI,” Liam explained.

  “And you were there when Cliff keeled over?” Dr. Bethany asked. He shook his head. “Sad thing. I enjoyed the fellow’s music quite a bit. Loved his way with people. A good man. A sad loss for us all down here in the Keys.”

  He was eyeing Brodie speculatively. Well, hell, yes, it was odd that Brodie had been around for two deaths. People weren’t murdered in the Keys every day, nor did they just drop dead every day.

  “Yes,” Brodie said simply.

  Liam asked if they could see Cliff.

  “You saw him last night, didn’t you? I hear you were there when he died,” Bethany said. “You and Mr. McFadden here.”

  Was the old man suspicious of him, Brodie wondered?

  “I was. I’d like to see the body today, though,” Liam said.

  “As you wish. I guess there was a lot of hoopla going on at the time, and you detectives and investigators... Well, I’m going to suggest natural causes, Liam, but you go ahead and see what you can see,” Dr. Bethany told him.

  They left the ship’s victim, and Dr. Bethany led them to a room where three other corpses awaited autopsy.

  “Mrs. Delany of Marathon,” Dr. Bethany said, pointing to one. “Ninety-three, but she died alone. And Harvey Martin, retiree from Grassy Key. He was in his eighties, a snowbird. He, too, was alone in his trailer.” He sighed. “And here...Cliff Bullard.”

  He pulled down the sheet.

  There was little to see. Cliff, in death. Cold, eyes closed, as if he slept. But there was actually nothing of life to the man, though there were no gashes or bruises or anything that would indicate that the man did anything more than sleep. Didn’t matter. There was life, or there was not.

  Once again, like Liam, Brodie reached out to touch the corpse. And while there was no sense of him in the morgue, there was something that hinted to Brodie that he might not be quite as gone as his stone-cold corpse indicated.

  Do you know? Could you even know just what happened? Brodie wondered.

  “Thank you,” Liam said softly. “Goodbye, old friend,” he said softly to the corpse. “You’ll always be with us—the stuff of local legend.”

  They thanked Dr. Bethany; once again, the doctor assured Liam that he would receive reports on all his findings.

  When they were back out by the car, Liam asked, “What do you think?”

  “Maybe the killer—of our ship’s victim—hoped that he’d douse the life out of his victim with one swipe.”

  “But he was prepared—with a cord.”

  “Okay, so he meant to knock the victim out—and then finish him off.”

  Liam nodded and sighed softly. “I think you’re right. Hopefully, as soon as we learn his identity, we can find a motive—and then a killer.”

  “Hopefully.”

  “And what about Cliff?” Liam asked.

  Brodie shrugged. “I think... I think you’re right. I think he’s still with us—as a musical legend in the Keys.”

  3

  Kody was happy to see that Rosy Bullard had gotten out of bed, gotten dressed and brushed her hair, even applied makeup.

  Of course, the second she saw Kody, tears formed in her eyes and she hugged Kody fiercely.

  Then she drew back, and began speaking quickly.

  “I don’t believe this...we were...we were still newlyweds, really. Okay, well, it was over a year. Oh, he took me on the most romantic sail for our anniversary. He was such an amazing man. His voice, Kody...at least I still have his recordings. I’ll always be able to hear him. Oh, I can’t believe this! If they’d only give him to me. I have to go to the funeral home. I mean, I don’t know when I get his body, but I feel that I must be doing something. I must take care of all the arrangements. We’ll have a funeral at the church—he would have wanted that. He was a good man, a religious man. But I’m not sure whether he’d have rather been in the cemetery, or if I should have him cremated and scatter his ashes out on the water—he loved Key West and the cemetery, but he also loved the water so very much. I just don’t know what to do... Oh, Kody! It was the oddest thing. I felt that he was with me when I slept, that he was smoothing my hair back, telling me that it was going to be all right. Of course, that would be Cliff, too. So giving. Him dead, but assuring me that he was all right!”

  Kody was at a loss. “I’m so sorry, Rosy. So sorry.”

  “I know you loved him, too.”

  “Very much.”

  “And he was playing when he died. Playing your song—your dad’s song. You were singing. At least...he was doing what he loved, with someone he loved. That’s a bit of comfort to me. I just thought...well, I thought we had years to go.”

  “Rosy, you were his happiness.”

  “I hope so. I truly hope that, at the very least, I made his last year a very happy one.”

  “I know so,” Kody said. “Is there...is there anything I can do for you?”

  “It’s so soon...it just happened. I don’t know... I don’t know how I’ll ever go through his things. His clothes... There are charity foundations that can make good use of them. I just don’t... I’m lost, I’m afraid. I feel that I should be cleaning, or working, or doing something. Moving, being busy.”

  “Being busy isn’t a bad thing, but I don’t know if you have to go through all Cliff’s belongings yet. That would probably be painful. Painting makes you happy. Maybe you want to draw, or perhaps even find a picture of the two of you and create a painting from that,” Kody suggested.

  Rosy nodded thoughtfully.

  “Coffee,” she said.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes, let’s have coffee. And then maybe... Kody, this may sound strange, but would you mind going through the bedroom, folding up his clothing... I had a friend who lost her husband, and a year later, she hadn’t touched any of his things. I don’t want to go that route. I’m going to have to live without him—I have to become accustomed to that without, without...”

  “Not to worry, Rosy. I will do anything you need.”

  “Coffee first. Then...”

  Rosy brewed coffee, talking all the while. About the way she and Cliff had met. The way that Cliff had serenaded her. How it had been, getting to know his friends, the community of the Keys, the way that Cliff had made everything so easy for her.

  Finally, she seemed to be talked out.

  “I think I will do a painting,” she said.

  Rosy set up; Kody went on into the bedroom to start collecting and folding Cliff’s clothing.

  And a
s she did so, she thought of the man who had been her father’s friend, and her friend, and she thought about the music, and how different her personal world would be without him.

  “My friend, my dear, dear friend. I thought there would be so many more years. No, in truth, I never thought about losing you at all,” she said softly.

  There were pictures on the dresser. She picked up one that was of her as a child with Cliff and her dad. She was between the two of them, holding a hand of each man. There were more pictures: Cliff playing at the bar hut. Cliff with a giant fish he’d caught in the Florida Straits. Cliff, just holding his guitar.

  Cliff with Rosy. Smiling, holding her tightly. Loving her so much.

  Kody went back to work.

  “I’m going to help Rosy, however I can,” she vowed out loud.

  She waited.

  But if Cliff had somehow stayed on, he didn’t answer her. And he didn’t appear.

  She prayed he was at peace.

  * * *

  A police artist had done a sketch of what the dead man from the ship might have looked like in life; it had gone out in local media.

  By the time Brodie and Liam arrived back in Key West, they’d identified him.

  His name was Arnold Ferrer. He had come down from Georgia after the discovery of the shipwreck.

  His great-great-great-great grandfather had been on the ship; he had survived the sinking. He hadn’t been a slave, chained in the bowels of the ship. Ferrer’s antecedent had been a slave trader from Portugal. Arnold Ferrer had documents that he’d wanted to turn over to Sea Life and/or the new museum.

  A woman named Beverly Atkins was waiting for them at the Key West police station when they arrived; she had information.

  Beverly owned the Sea Horse bed-and-breakfast on Simonton Street.

  Brodie recognized her.

  She had been at the bar the other night.

  She was sitting in Liam’s office with Detective Al Garcia, a man Brodie had met the day before, when the police had arrived in force after he’d discovered the body.

  Al was listening as Beverly, a silver-haired little slip of a woman, talked a mile a minute. The man—late twenties with a pleasant manner and sympathetic dark eyes—was looking a bit frazzled.