The Boat Man: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 1)

by Dustin Stevens

  Mixed in was a healthy avoidance of sleep for fear of what might be lying in wait for him, a bout of self-imposed guilt that would make any Catholic mother proud preying on his subconscious.

  The combined effects caused him to do something he hadn’t in over five years, not since his early days of pulling double shifts on patrol. Unable to summon the requisite strength on his own to keep moving forward with any degree of clarity, he went past the occasional canned espresso and called on the coffee dispenser in the basement of the coroner’s office, watching as the muddy brown liquid filtered down into the paper cup held beneath it, a healthy swath of steam rising from it. The oversized machine rumbled as it dispensed the liquid, the entire thing shaking in place, before the stream stopped, a low hiss emitted in its wake.

  Making a face, Reed pulled the cup from the bottom rack and wrapped both hands around it, carrying it out in front of him towards Solomon’s office at the end of the hall. Halfway there he raised it enough to blow across the top of the coffee before taking a drink, an involuntary wince crossing his features.

  “What the hell is that smell?” Solomon asked as he entered, peering up at him over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was still dressed in her lab coat and apron, right out of the examination room.

  Reed held the cup up for her by way of an explanation, dropping himself into the same chair he’d used just a day before.

  “So that’s what that rumbling was a little bit ago,” Solomon said, disapproval on her face as she looked at the drink in his hand. “That’s the first time I’ve ever known anybody to be brave enough to give that thing a try.”

  Chancing one more drink, Reed let the caustic beverage slide down his throat, the burn reminding him more of high-proof whiskey than coffee. Under any other circumstances he would have poured it out and flushed it away to ensure no other living creature stumbled across it, but at the moment the need for caffeine overpowered any lingering qualms about taste.

  “Tastes like it, too,” Reed said, placing the cup on the floor beneath his chair, sliding it back out of range from his heels. “What were you able to find today?”

  Reed realized after asking that the question sounded pointier than intended, though Solomon seemed to brush by it without noticing.

  Busy people tended to be less caught up in such things. As Riley used to say, manners were a creation of the bored.

  Pushing the glasses up a bit higher on her nose, Solomon spread the file across both thighs. She flipped through two pages fastened at the top with steel pins before dropping them back into place.

  “Two requests for rush jobs in as many days, Detective,” Solomon said as she scanned the top page. “When I got here this morning and was told another was en route for the 8th, I admit I was a little peeved. Once I got in there though, I understood why.”

  The words, serving as an opening, did more to jolt Reed’s system than any amount of coffee could have. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, waiting for her to continue.

  In the chair opposite him, Solomon looked up from the file and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, because I don’t imagine you appreciate someone telling you how to do your job any more than I do, but all signs point to you having a serial killer on your hands.”

  Reed felt his jaw drop open an inch as he stared back, not sure how to respond to the statement.

  “And from what I saw in there this afternoon, he’s escalating.”

  The only thing that could have possibly hit Reed harder than the first sentence was the second, smacking him in the solar plexus. He remained still a long moment to mask any reaction as the shock fell away, his mind taking back over, processing what he’d heard.

  “Start at the beginning.”

  Pausing a moment, Solomon nodded in approval at his response and said, “COD: again a stab wound that pierced the aorta, TOD: best guess would be twelve to sixteen hours before I opened him. ME on the scene marked it at eleven last night, which I would agree with.”

  She rattled off the information without glancing down at her notes. “That’s where the similarities to the previous night stop. On this victim there are two lacerations across the abdomen, not enough to disembowel but pretty close. Had the attacker wanted to, he easily could have.”

  Reed thought about the final statement, fitting it in with the report from the night before. “So he was playing with him?”

  “Seems that way,” Solomon said. “I didn’t have time to run a full tox screen, but took a look at his blood and found adrenaline levels to be through the roof. This guy was in serious pain when he finally passed.”

  The familiar sense of dread heightened with Reed. The killer was evolving, improving on his craft.

  “Defensive?” Reed asked.

  “No,” Solomon said. “Though I did find dirt under the fingernails of both hands, as if he’d been trying to crawl back away.”

  Focusing his attention on the opposite wall, Reed pinched his brow in tight and remembered the scene from the night before. He had extensive photographs that were by now waiting on his desk, images covering every angle of the scene.

  From what he remembered, footprints from the dog were the predominant thing visible in the dirt.

  He made a mental note to check for signs of flight.

  “What about the arms?”

  “What a mess,” Solomon muttered, shaking her head. “I’m sure you noticed on site that bleeding was heavier on the right side than the left?”

  Again Reed furrowed his brow, thinking back. “Yes,” he said. “And that’s the one the dog had gotten hold of. There was a trail of blood from the body out through the dirt.”

  “That’s because the right one was removed while the victim was still alive,” Solomon said. “The veins and capillaries were still open, blood loss in the tissue surrounding the area almost complete.”

  “And the other was more window dressing than anything else,” Reed finished, working the sequence out in his mind. Once more he put himself back at the scene, thinking of what he saw.

  “Dog did a number on the arm, too,” Solomon said. “Tore away a pretty good chunk of meat, scratched the hell out of the skin.”

  “Damn,” Reed muttered, his eyes pulling tight in a wince. “Man’s best friend, huh?”

  He had caught a glimpse of the dog under the guard of animal control, the pit bull no more than half the size of Billie. Before finishing the thought he pushed it away, shuddering even at the idea of her jaws going to work on a victim.

  “So one arm before death, one after,” Reed said, fixing things into place in his mind. “Same murder weapon?”

  “That I don’t know,” Solomon said, “but I put some side-by-side photos in there for you comparing the two victims. It’s impossible to tell one knife wound from another with a complete degree of certainty, but I can tell you they are very consistent.

  “Almost identical, in fact.”

  Again Reed nodded. He had expected that to be the case, the other similarities too pronounced to be coincidence.

  “Okay,” he said, running his hands down the front of his pants. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, actually,” Solomon responded, turning in her chair and taking up a small evidence bag from the desk behind her. It was made of clear plastic, an ID tag filled in with ink along the top. She held it between her index and middle finger, extending it towards him.

  “I dug this from the victim’s trachea, so far down I’m not surprised the ME missed it on the scene. I didn’t even notice it until I saw some scraping along the inside of the throat.”

  Reed accepted the item and held it up towards the light, the overhead bulb shining through the plastic. At the bottom of it was a small metal disc, the diameter of a nickel, though much thicker and non-uniform in shape.

  “Scraping?” Reed asked. “Meaning it was forced there?”

  “That would be my guess,” Solomon replied. “Looked to be inserted post-mortem, meaning it wasn’t swallo
wed, and there was no way the victim did it to himself.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Hey, buddy, can you hold that a second?”

  The Boat Man put a friendly smile on his face as he said the words, jogging forward to the gate. In one hand he carried an oversized lunch cooler with nothing inside, the other a gym bag filled with just enough crumpled newspaper to give the item some shape. Both bounced by his side as he shuffled forward, his boots dragging against the concrete underfoot.

  The man holding the door did so without a word, a look of exasperation on his face as he watched the Boat Man grow close. When he was just a few feet away he shoved it out wide, the Boat Man catching it with his shoulder and stepping through.

  “Thanks.”

  The man already had his back turned, moving on into the building.

  Three times a day the Midwestern Paper factory made a shift change, once at seven in the morning, again at three in the afternoon, a final time an hour before midnight. Operating in three even groupings, the place stayed fully operational regardless of hour, the only difference being reduced manpower at night.

  Under optimal conditions, the Boat Man would have preferred that this target went first, but he had to wait until he cycled onto the night shift for it to happen. The man’s living situation was too crowded to ensure invisibility and as far as could be ascertained, he very rarely went anywhere that wasn’t home or work.

  If only that had always been the case.

  Peeling himself away from the foot traffic flowing in, the Boat Man hooked a right into the restroom and locked himself in the back stall. There he remained while the last few stragglers of the afternoon shift filtered out, shedding both the bag and the cooler, stowing them along the wall behind the toilet.

  Every moment he had been in possession of the items he had worn gloves, ensuring that no physical evidence of any kind could tie him to them.

  Considering what he was about to leave behind, he highly doubted anybody would care about a duffel bag and a miniature Igloo.

  Stepping out from the stall, he stopped and peered at himself in the mirror. The look he had put together would blend well, a far cry from his actual appearance in the off chance there was a camera anywhere on the grounds.

  Raising his hands to the brim of the Browns cap he wore on his head, he adjusted it a half inch lower on his forehead, bringing it down to touch the top of his yellow safety glasses. Thick black curls spilled out between the two, the wig hot and itchy, though a necessary precaution.

  Reaching down to his side he tapped the fingernails of his right hand against his hip, the hollow sound of the scabbard tucked beneath his clothes echoing out.

  It was time.

  Exiting from the restroom, the Boat Man crossed the yellow safety line on the edge of the factory floor, headed for the rear of the building. Beside him, three large conveyor systems fed finished cardboard boxes into stacks, a machine wrapping them tight in green plastic strips for hauling. Moving amongst them were a dozen employees, all dressed in the same jeans and flannel look he now sported, nobody glancing his way as they got to work for the night.

  Keeping his right leg extended straight, the Boat Man walked with a bit of a limp as he moved through the main hull of the building, past the inking stations and the baler where two kids fresh out of high school fed scraps to be repurposed for use again.

  It was the third time the Boat Man had been inside Midwestern, using the same ruse each time before to gain entry. In a place as large as the factory, with over a hundred people coming in and out at every shift, it wasn’t difficult for him to gain entry, blending seamlessly with the masses.

  Spread out over the last couple of months, the Boat Man had gotten a clear idea of where everything was located inside, of the best place to find his target.

  Throwing a wave to one of the young guys working the baler, the Boat Man walked through the oversized doorways leading from the main factory floor into the storage room in the back. The whining call of machinery fell away as he passed through, absorbed by the concrete block separating the two sides.

  What was just a few feet earlier noise and heat fell away to cool silence, the room half the size of the factory floor, stacked floor to ceiling with enormous rolls of raw paper. Stripes of black rubber crisscrossed the floor from the modified forklifts used to transport the product, a series of railroad cars positioned along the back wall, ready to move out as soon as they were loaded.

  A smile crossed over the Boat Man’s face as he made one pass through the room, making sure everything was in order, before settling himself into position.

  All he had to do now was wait.

  The Boat Man was good at waiting.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Through some sort of merciful twist in karmic logic, Reed was unable to dream, or rather, unable to remember them. He was fully aware of the fact that he had a subconscious that was far more active than the common person, for almost without fail when he awoke he found himself in a worse state than when he’d fallen asleep.

  This evening was no different.

  The sky outside his window was still dark as his eyes opened. The sheets beneath him were wet, the thin fabric sticking to his skin, beads of sweat streaming down the side of his face. Most of the blankets had been balled into a tangle at the foot of the bed, twisted into a heap that looked like he had been thrashing just moments before.

  From the doorway, a soft whine met his ears, pulling his attention from the world outside to a pair of moist circles standing three feet off the floor. There they remained, unblinking, as he ran a hand back over his forehead, pulling sweat away and wiping it against the bed beneath him.

  “Hey, girl,” he said, his voice betraying the exhaustion he felt.

  At the sound of his voice Billie took the initiative, stepping forward into the room, her toenails clicking against the hardwood floors of the house. She walked up alongside the bed and rested her chin on the mattress, her nose cool and wet against his skin.

  Curling his arm at the elbow, Reed buried his fingers into the thick black hair behind her ears, low moans escaping her as he kneaded the skin back and forth.

  “Care to tell me what the hell had me sweating like a pig in here?” Reed asked, not expecting an answer, appreciating the effort as Billie forced her eyes back open to look at him.

  “No? How about how many times a week you stand there watching over me?”

  Reed waited a full moment for a response he knew wasn’t coming before raising himself to a seated position. Sleep was now gone, any chance at returning to it futile. His right hand he kept on Billie’s head, the left he used to rub the crust from his eyes as he turned and focused on the glowing red clock face beside the bed.

  Half past two in the morning.

  Less than three hours since he had lain down to sleep.

  Kicking away the last bits of blanket around his feet, Reed rose and pulled on a pair of gym shorts, the floorboards of his farmhouse creaking as he made his way through it. Behind him he could hear Billie following him into the kitchen, her feet beating out a steady beat.

  Starting in the pantry, Reed filled the silver bowls on the floor by the sink with kibble and water, watching for a moment as Billie fell to her breakfast. He watched her attack the food with vigor, feeling his own hunger rise within.

  Most nights they would be in the middle of a shift, the both of them breaking for food, their internal clocks telling them this evening should be no different.

  Putting on a pan of water to boil eggs, Reed extracted a Gatorade from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table, resuming the same position he’d been in just a few hours before. Splashed across the polished surface were the conglomerated effects of two case files, the photos nothing short of horrific as they stared back up at him.

  He was making progress, though it seemed to have a clear ceiling on it that Reed was fast approaching.

  Both murders had been committed in the same fashion, with only moderate v
ariation on the MO. The fact that the second one seemed far more vicious than the first concerned him, though he had tried to reason with himself that the escalation could have been caused by anything, ranging from a personal connection to somebody walking by before he could finish with Mentor.

  The only way to know for sure would be the appearance of a third body, something he desperately hoped didn’t happen, no matter how much harder it made his investigation.

  It was the agreed opinion of both he and the coroner that the same weapon had been used twice, which if nothing else indicated it was only a single person. He hoped that the criminologists were able to pull something from the balcony perch that could be useful, or at the very least confirm that supposition, though he wouldn’t know until morning and wasn’t holding his breath.

  Thus far the guy had been spotless. There was no reason to believe that would suddenly change.

  The water on the stove started to boil as Reed drew himself up and dropped a trio of eggs into it, pulling it from the heat and covering the pot. On the floor beside him Billie finished up the last of her meal, shoving the empty dish along the ground, her muzzle buried deep into the corner of it, trying to get out every last morsel.

  Remaining standing, Reed folded his arms and put his back against the counter, waiting for his eggs to finish as he stared at the mountain of paperwork across from him. So far the scenes had given him little to work with, almost everything he knew originating with the bodies themselves, which practically begged to be noticed.

  Otherwise there was nothing, meaning the connection had to be with the victims themselves.

  The sound of his landline blasted Reed from his thoughts just as he was putting together an agenda for the morning, jerking his head towards the wall where it hung. As far as he could tell it was the first time the object had been used in years, the sound so foreign a growl rolled from deep within Billie as she tensed, trying to place it.