Bluewater Stalker: The Sixth Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 6)

by Charles Dougherty

  "No need for that. I'll run you into town in the dinghy," Dani volunteered. "I need to stop by Customs and Immigration and let them know we're not leaving today."

  ****

  "The coroner says it was probably an ice pick in her ear." The Chief Superintendent of the Royal Grenada Police Force sat in a well-padded visitor's chair across the desk from the Deputy Commissioner of Police, who had summoned him immediately upon learning of the body found last night.

  "So it's murder, then?"

  "Yes, but it's so strange."

  "You mean the way she was killed?"

  "That, and …"

  "What?"

  "There wasn't a mark on her body. No bruises or scratches. No sign of a struggle. The coroner says it was almost clinical, except …"

  "Except what?"

  "Her eyelids -- they were glued shut with super-glue."

  "After she was killed?"

  "Presumably. Or there would have been signs of a struggle."

  "Had she been, ah …"

  "No signs of any sexual contact, before or after she was killed. Clothing was all intact. When the Constable found her, he thought she was taking a nap, until he saw the blood from her ear. I got there a little later, before the body was disturbed. It looked like someone had laid her out deliberately, posed her to look like she was sleeping peacefully."

  "How strange," the Deputy Commissioner said.

  "Indeed, sir." The Chief Superintendent, with 30 years on the force, was no novice when it came to homicides, but homicides in Grenada fell into two broad categories. There were the conventional killings, fueled by rage, greed, jealousy, and so forth. They tended to be messy, and the killer virtually always knew the victim well. The weapons were either blunt instruments or edged weapons: knives, machetes, and razors were popular. It wasn't unusual for a victim in such a killing to be literally hacked to pieces, or beaten beyond recognition.

  Recently, organized crime had begun to contribute an occasional victim to Grenada's annual 10-to-15-person list of homicides. Guns often figured in these killings, although edged weapons were used, too. If the killing was intended to send a message of some sort, the corpse might be mutilated in some relevant manner, but the killers rarely left the evidence of anger that was common in the conventional killings; the professional killers left much cleaner scenes.

  Both men realized this homicide fit neither category.

  "Who was she?" the Deputy Commissioner asked.

  "Cleopatra Williston. Single black female, 25 years of age. Never married. No particular male friends. She lived with her mother and two younger sisters, not far from Blessed Sacrament Church in Grand Anse. She was active in the Church. She worked in the office of a company in the building next to the cruise ship terminal that coordinates tours for the ships' passengers. She closed the office last night — she stayed late by herself to finish up something, so nobody knows exactly what time she left. So far, we haven't found any witnesses."

  "Well, that's not a surprise. It gets pretty quiet in that area once the ships leave and the stores close. Any thoughts on motive? Robbery, maybe?"

  "I don't think so, sir. There was $200 in her purse, and her credit cards were still there. It didn't look like anything was missing."

  The Deputy Commissioner shook his head. "Let me know if anything else comes up, please." He pushed his chair back and started to lift his massive body to a standing position.

  "Of course, sir," the Chief Superintendent said, rising quickly and shaking hands with his boss before he left.

  ****

  Dani returned to Vengeance about half an hour after taking the Fitzgeralds downtown. Liz was in the cockpit reading, having just finished her daily cleanup below decks. She stood and took the dinghy painter from Dani as she brought the rigid inflatable boat alongside. She cleated the line as Dani scrambled aboard.

  "Any trouble changing the departure?"

  "No, they're always happy to hear our guests want to stay and go shopping. But I did pick up some disturbing news."

  "What's that?" Liz asked.

  "The police found a murder victim near the cruise ship terminal, in one of those short alleys just off Melville Street."

  "And I just told the Fitzgeralds how safe it is here. Who was it?"

  "A local woman named Cleopatra Williston. She apparently worked around there somewhere."

  "Love gone wrong?" Liz asked.

  "That's what I figured, but the guys in Customs and Immigration said the cops don't think so. She was killed with an ice pick to the ear, and not another mark on her. Nothing missing from her purse; laid out like she was asleep."

  "Now that's weird," Liz said. "Not typical of a local murder at all."

  "No. Almost sounds like a professional hit," Dani said. "But not the kind of drug-runner killings that happen down here. More like a psycho of some kind."

  "It'll be interesting to hear what Bill thinks about that," Liz said.

  "Yes, it will. I kind of like them, by the way."

  "You mean I won't have to stay on my toes running interference between you and our guests this trip? Like the last professor we had aboard?"

  "Aw, come on, Liz. That guy was a jerk. Bill seems pretty normal to me. So does Jane."

  "Good. Hold that thought, partner. Here they come, walking down the dock with an armload of packages." Liz glanced at her wristwatch. "I'll bet they ate lunch in town. It's after two. You hungry?"

  "I could eat. If they've eaten already, let's go up to the marina restaurant and get something."

  "Sounds good to me," Liz said.

  Chapter 3

  He sat on the small patio, the sliding glass door into his hotel room open behind him so he could hear the midday news from the television. The lead story was, of course, about his handiwork of the night before. He listened carefully, focusing as much on what was not said as what was underlined in the plummy, faux-BBC voice of the local announcer. There was no mention of the eyelids, of how carefully she was arranged to mimic sleep — or death, he smiled to himself. He wondered if they withheld those details from the press deliberately, or if they just considered them unimportant. There was little speculation as to the motive for the woman's killing, which he found interesting.

  "Cleopatra Williston was a communicant of Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church," he heard the announcer say. Now he had a name for her. That was comforting to him; he didn't like anonymous victims. He listened as the announcer went on to say she had lived near the church with her mother and two younger sisters. There was no mention of a husband or a boyfriend, though. In the clear absence of an immediate motive, like robbery, he would have expected them to suspect the man in her life. Then again, Cleopatra — he paused for a moment to wonder whether she had been Cleopatra or Cleo — had not been wearing a ring, but it was hard for him to believe that as pretty as she had been, she didn't have a boyfriend or a husband.

  The announcer moved on to the next topic of the day, something about the nutmeg crop. He picked up the remote from the glass-topped patio table and switched off the television. Returning the remote to the tabletop, he extracted a moisture-beaded bottle of Carib beer from the ice bucket on the table and popped the cap off with an old-fashioned bottle opener — no twist-off caps on these recycled bottles. He took a sip of the beer and listened to the soft sound of the waves lapping against Grand Anse Beach a hundred or so yards away. Inhaling the clean, sweet air, he caught just a whiff of the ocean, along with some pleasant, slightly smoky aroma. He remembered the bellman telling him Grenada was the Isle of Spice; he could believe it, based on the enticing smells wafting along on the breeze. This was a beautiful, peaceful place; he was pleased at the prospect of a little time to relax, now that his work here was done.

  He would be moving north soon, but he wasn't yet sure of his next stop. He had investigated travel options earlier and decided that moving by inter-island freighter would suit him well. It didn't leave as clear a trail as air travel, for one thing, and the scen
ery would certainly be better. He wondered how the hunting would be wherever he next came to rest. This kill had been too easy for his liking. Maybe the next one would offer more of a challenge. Cleopatra had been a pure target of opportunity. He had passed on a couple of tourists a few minutes before she stepped out of the office building into his path. The tourists had been particularly tempting — a couple, inebriated, clumsy but not too drunk to be fun. He relished that look of sheer terror the victims got when they realized what was happening. He could have knocked the man unconscious without being seen, and then dispatched the woman, leaving a confused, worthless witness, but a witness nonetheless. That would have really frustrated the cops. He laughed at the thought. Cleopatra would be a puzzle for them as well, though, and she was a local. That was more important in the long term than the immediate satisfaction he would have gotten from killing the female tourist. He had to stay focused; he wasn't to kill any tourists. That wasn't the game this time.

  ****

  The Fitzgeralds had indeed eaten at one of the local-style restaurants on the Carenage, but they had elected to accompany Liz and Dani to the restaurant at the head of the marina dock, where they sipped cold rum punch while Dani and Liz ate a light lunch. Gossip about the murder dominated the conversation at their table as well as among the rest of the patrons, most of whom were sitting where they could watch the wide-screen television. Normally, it would have been tuned to CNN or the BBC coverage of cricket. There seemed to always be a championship cricket match somewhere in Britain's former colonies. Today, however, it was showing local programming, with frequent interruptions for the latest tidbit of information about the victim and her family.

  "Is this a typical reaction on the part of the people to a local murder?" Bill asked.

  "Well," Dani said, "probably not. Murder isn't an everyday occurrence here like it is in the States. Grenada's population isn't even 100,000. It would just be a good-sized town in the U.S. They probably have 10 or 12 homicides a year, so each one is remarkable."

  "Besides that," Liz contributed, "this is a really strange one for the islands. When somebody gets killed down here, it's usually either a crime of passion or some kind of drug-related shooting. The drug-runners are the only people with guns."

  "So how does a jealous husband deal with his wife's boyfriend?" Jane asked.

  "Fists or a big stick, most likely," Dani said. "Or if he means to do serious harm, a machete or a butcher knife, but the islands don't have the kind of violence we do up north. Crimes are mostly thefts, with an occasional robbery or rape."

  "Are tourists the usual victims of that kind of crime?" Jane asked.

  "Petty theft, sometimes. Maybe a purse-snatching, but generally, victims are locals. Nobody wants to scare the tourists away, so everybody keeps an eye on them and that makes the streets pretty safe."

  "So this is an unusual crime, then," Bill said, "in more than one way. I'll bet the local police are flummoxed because there's no boyfriend. That explains why the reporters keep harping on the fact that she didn't have any male friends of note."

  "Right," Liz agreed. "Nor was anything taken from her purse. They keep saying she had several hundred dollars in cash and two credit cards."

  "Yes. That rules out the motives they're most familiar with," Dani said. "That leaves drugs, and it sounds like she wasn't the type to be involved. Besides, drugs usually mean guns. An ice pick in the ear almost sounds like a professional killing — Mafia or something. But how could she have become a target for that, and even if she had, why would the killer have posed her like she was asleep?"

  "Good questions. I'm sure the police are asking the same ones," Bill said.

  "Almost sounds like some kind of psycho," Jane said.

  "It does," Bill agreed. "Have they ever had that kind of killer on the loose down here?"

  Liz and Dani exchanged glances.

  "Are they set up to even notice that kind of thing?" Jane asked. "I mean, if some serial killer …"

  "Well, we think of serial killers as a problem more confined to the States, and maybe parts of Europe," Bill interrupted. "I'd think a serial killer on a small island like this would get caught pretty quickly."

  "What if he wasn't a local?" Jane said. "Suppose he was someone who could move from island to island without attracting too much attention?"

  Liz cleared her throat audibly and looked at Dani. Dani nodded and started to speak. "There was a guy like that, an American, who was cruising the islands on his sailboat a few years ago. Nobody knows for sure, but there was some evidence that he might have killed a number of women. Most of the time, he didn't leave bodies behind, and the victims weren't the kind of women who were really missed, unfortunately. The cops never even realized what was happening."

  "How do you even know about this, then?" Bill's forehead was creased with deep wrinkles as he waited for an answer.

  "Liz and I knew him," Dani said. "It was before we had Vengeance; in fact, it was before we met each other. I had been crew on a good-sized private British yacht, and I got fed up and quit. I was looking for a ride north from the Grenadines, and ended up crewing for the guy. He was single-handing a beautiful old wooden yawl. He tried to kill me; knocked me out, tossed me overboard a few miles off St. Vincent, and left me for dead."

  "Wow! What a story," Jane said. "You're lucky to be alive. How did you survive? You swam ashore, or what?"

  "Well, no. That's a long story, and not really on the topic, but I don't mind telling you about it another time. Liz had her own encounter with him, not too long after that."

  Bill and Jane shifted in their chairs to better see Liz as she began to tell her part of the story.

  "I was on a sabbatical from my job in Brussels with the European Commission. I'd been idling around in the islands for a few weeks, and I was in Marie Galante — one of the islands that make up the French département of Guadeloupe. I spotted this gorgeous boat at anchor in the harbor there and noticed there was a cute guy living on her, alone. I was lonely, and I love to sail. I really wanted to put that old Concordia yawl through her paces, so I kind of picked him up on the beach. He was looking for crew and companionship, and we got on pretty well at first. He was headed north, and I wanted to visit a friend from university in Antigua, so we took off one day. The better I got to know him, the stranger his behavior seemed. He had these blackouts sometimes. He wouldn't lose consciousness, but he didn't know I was there, and he'd talk to people who weren't really there. Sometimes after one of his spells, he'd call me by the wrong name. He also became very possessive of me, but had no interest in me sexually. He wanted me to commit to sail around the world with him. Before we resolved that, he ran the boat onto a reef on the coast of Antigua in the middle of the night while I was asleep. I woke up in the wreckage and managed to get ashore, but there was no sign of him."

  Dani caught Liz's eye and pursed her lips. Liz nodded, and Dani picked up the story.

  "My family had some people looking for me, meanwhile. They had learned that I had been on this guy's boat, and they discovered he had been involved in the disappearances of several women, in the islands and elsewhere. Once they found me, they had enough to get a warrant for his arrest from the U.S. and I was along for the ride while they were chasing him. We got to Antigua the morning after the wreck and he was nowhere to be found. We knew Liz had been aboard his boat, but we thought she died in the wreck, too, or that he had dumped her at sea. Then I bumped into her in an art gallery a few days later. She was painting a picture of his boat, and I recognized it and started chatting with her. Not long after, we decided to buy Vengeance together and do this."

  "That's some adventurous tale," Bill said. "You could write a book."

  "Actually, a friend of ours did. It's called Bluewater Killer. There's a copy on the bookshelf in your stateroom, if you're interested," Dani said.

  "Definitely. I've got it first, Bill," Jane said. "So this guy, what was his name, anyway?"

  "Mike Reilly," Liz said.

>   "So did Mike Reilly ever show up?"

  Liz looked at Dani, who shook her head slightly.

  "We're not sure; he may have survived the wreck, but if he did, he's almost certainly dead now. That's another long story."

  Bill and Jane both nodded. "Fair enough," Bill said.

  "On a completely different subject," Liz said, "I've booked you with Dennis Caravan Tours for tomorrow. Barry Dennis will pick you up here at the marina at 8:30 tomorrow morning."

  "Hey, that's great," Jane said.

  Chapter 4

  Dani and Liz were taking advantage of the Fitzgerald's absence to catch up on boat maintenance. Barry Dennis had picked their guests up at 8:30 sharp, his habitual punctuality unremarkable to the guests, but atypical of islanders nonetheless. Bill and Jane had passed a quiet evening aboard last night, retiring to their cabin to read after making quick work of the seared tuna steaks Liz had served. They had slept late, still recovering from the jet lag resulting from their trip from the States two days before, and breakfast had been a hurried affair. Bill commented that he had been scanning the cruising guide to the Windward Islands, considering where they might like to spend their time over the next few days. Before either Liz or Dani could respond, Jane had remarked that she was enjoying Bluewater Killer and wondered how much liberty the author had taken with Dani's experience.

  "That's hard to know," Dani had replied. "I was comatose for most of it, and sort of punchy for the rest. You'd have to ask Phillip or Sharktooth to get a straight answer."

  "They're real people, then?"

  "As real as we are."

  "I guess I can see Phillip — Davis — was that his name?"

  Dani nodded.

  "He seems real enough, but Sharktooth …"

  Dani and Liz both chuckled at Jane's pause.

  "He's real, all right, and just like the book says. Just wait. He'll be the one to show you around Dominica when we get there," Liz said.

  Their conversation had been interrupted by Barry Dennis hailing them as he walked down the dock. In spite of his assurance that there was no rush, both the Fitzgeralds had wolfed down their breakfasts, eager to get a look at the Isle of Spice.