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

by Charles Dougherty

  "Look! Here's a note," Liz called. Dani and Bill joined her at the saloon table, where she was looking at a cream-colored envelope with "Doctor Fitzgerald" written across it in a neat script.

  She handed it to Bill, who immediately tore it open and started reading, sinking to the cushions after a moment. He dropped the note, putting his face in his hands and resting his elbows on the table. Dani and Liz waited in silence, looking at one another. After several seconds, he looked up at them.

  "He's taken her," he said in a soft voice.

  "Who?" Liz asked.

  "The killer," Bill whispered. "Cardile."

  "You think Cardile's the killer?" Liz asked.

  He nodded. "The note …"

  "May I?" Dani reached for the letter.

  He nodded again, and she picked it up by the edges and held it so she and Liz could read it together.

  Dear Dr. Fitzgerald,

  or perhaps, given all that we share, I should call you Bill. Yes, Bill. I like that. It suits us better, don't you think?

  I've enjoyed having you as my audience, as it were; you seem most appreciative of my work. I like that about you, but I find your pathetic attempts to interpret my art rather annoying.

  I want you to think about that; ponder it; consider how little you know about the mind of a killer. After all, you've never killed, have you, Bill?

  You're a mere voyeur, imagining what it would be like to have the fortitude, the courage, and the skills to kill with impunity.

  If I decide to let you continue with your pitiful simulacrum of a life, you'll have to change. You will have to refrain from speaking with such authority about what drives a killer -- unless you'd care to learn first-hand. If you display sufficient humility and motivation, I might accept you as an acolyte, an understudy for the role of Death.

  I urge you to give this matter your utmost attention. In the interest of allowing you to contemplate your decision without distraction, I have taken your lovely wife on a little trip. And what a delightful distraction she is. But you know that, of course. I must confess I share your taste in women.

  Lest Jane's fate cause you anxiety, be assured that no harm will come to her while she's in my care. I'll do my best to keep her occupied and happy. When you and I resolve our differences, and I'm sure we will, she will be free to return to you, no worse for her adventure. Of course, that assumes that she will want to return to you. Your choices in this matter will doubtless influence her decision.

  She's waking up now. I must attend to her needs. I'll be in touch.

  Fondly,

  The One called Death

  "You think David Cardile wrote this?" Liz asked.

  "It's almost verbatim from his book. I mean, he changed some of it to make it fit this context; in the book, it was addressed to an FBI profiler, but otherwise …"

  "Anything else that makes you think it's Cardile?" Dani asked.

  "Yes. His character referred to himself as 'The One called Death' anytime he signed a note that he left behind to tease the cops."

  Chapter 24

  "You should call the p'lice, but jus' don' 'spect too much, okay?" Sharktooth advised. "The mon here, he ver' junior, see. He have to call Roseau to learn what to do, an' he prob'ly don' do that tonight 'cause it he mother's birthday."

  Dani and Liz were drinking hot tea; Bill was nursing a second glass of dark rum mixed with coconut water and lime, having slugged back the first one while Dani and Liz checked the boat carefully to see if Jane's abductor had left anything beside the note. Finding nothing, Dani had called Sharktooth to convey their regrets about tonight's dinner invitation and to seek his advice.

  "But," Bill said, "there must be something we can do besides sit here while he …"

  "There's plenty, Bill. We'll get her back. It just won't be like in the States," Dani said.

  "I call aroun' now, while you call p'lice. Mebbe somebody notice somet'ing this afternoon. Don' worry, mon. This fella, he in big trouble now. He be gon' beg you fo' mercy soon. Tha's the troot. I call back ver' soon." Sharktooth disconnected, and Dani entered the number he had given her into the satellite phone.

  Dani listened to the ring tone for almost a full minute before someone picked up, mumbling an unintelligible greeting. She could hear the music from a local radio station in the background as she explained why she was calling. When she paused, the person asked her to hold while he turned down the music. After 30 seconds, he came back on the line and asked her to repeat what she had said. After she repeated her abbreviated report, stressing that an American visitor had been kidnapped from a yacht anchored in Prince Rupert Bay, she listened again for a few seconds and then disconnected the call. "Sharktooth got that right."

  "They're sending somebody?" Bill asked.

  She shook her head. "There's nobody to send; the constable is by himself, and the patrol boat has to come from Roseau, but they don't have a crew for it tonight."

  "So what did they say?"

  "If we want to report it, we should come in tomorrow morning after 8 o'clock and someone will take a statement from us. He said, 'Mebbe the lady, she come back soon. She not gone ver' long,' or something like that," Dani explained.

  "Shit! What're we going to do?"

  "Let's give Sharktooth a few minutes; he's got better contacts than the police have for finding out what happened in Portsmouth; it's a tiny place, and there aren't many outsiders. Somebody's bound to have seen something."

  "Okay, I guess. There's not much choice, is there? Should we call the embassy or something?"

  "Probably, but the U.S. Embassy is in Barbados; you'd have better luck in the morning. They can't do much immediately, anyway."

  "I can't just sit here."

  "Let's call Phillip and see if he's got any ideas. He should have heard back on the bug and the fingerprints by now."

  Bill nodded, a disconsolate look on his face as he sipped at his drink. He grimaced and put the glass down for a moment as he rose to his feet. Stepping into the galley, he poured the remaining drink into the sink. "Bad idea. Any more of that tea?"

  "You bet," Liz said, joining him in the galley and opening a locker to get a mug for him. They returned to the saloon as Dani switched the satellite phone to speaker mode and put it on the table.

  "You there, Phillip?"

  "Yes. I hear you. Bill?"

  "Hi, Phillip."

  "Hi. Look, Dani gave me the short version. This guy must want something from you; he snatched Jane for leverage. If he wanted to hurt her, he would have done it right there. You follow?"

  "Yes, but …"

  They waited for Bill to finish.

  "I guess I'd better just say this and get it over with. It's just so … embarrassing."

  "What's important is that we find this guy and get Jane back safely. If you think you have relevant information, forget the embarrassment. You're among friends."

  "Well, okay. First, I think it's David Cardile."

  "Why do you think that?"

  Bill explained the connection between the note and Cardile's book.

  "That's something," Phillip said, "but there could be other ways to explain that. Have a lot of people seen the manuscript?"

  "Well, now that you ask, yes. Jane said he'd been sharing it with his undergraduate classes for eight years, give or take."

  "So hundreds of people could have read it," Phillip pointed out.

  "Thousands, probably," Bill agreed, "but there's more."

  "What's that?"

  "This is tough, but I'll just say it. He and Jane …" his voice cracked. He paused and took a deep breath. Clearing his throat, he started again. "He and Jane have been seeing each other ever since her junior year, when he was her English prof. He blackmailed her into continuing the affair after we got married. It's gone on all this time, and she finally told him it was over, right before we left to come down here. I just found this out yesterday."

  Liz and Dani exchanged a look of sudden comprehension.

  "We'r
e okay," Bill went on. "It was a shock to me, of course, but we, … Jane and I are fine. We'll get through this, but I had no idea. I knew he chased all the girls in his classes, but … she's worried, though. She said he has a violent side that he keeps well hidden. She's afraid of him, and she said he didn't take it well when she told him it was over between them. She's sure his turning up in Bequia was no coincidence; she thinks he's the killer -- that he set me up to get back at her."

  "That's helpful background," Phillip said. "You were right to tell us; it won't go beyond the four of us."

  "I know. Thanks."

  "If there's nothing else you think we need to know, let me tell you what we've learned on this end."

  "Okay. There's nothing else that comes to mind. If I think of anything, I'll let you know."

  "Good. Dani, the gizmo you found on the underside of the table was a wireless listening device. It's low-powered; it has a range of maybe a quarter mile, which says he expected to stay close to Vengeance, at least while he was eavesdropping."

  "I guessed that."

  "Yes. Before I forget, did you do anything about that tracker you found?"

  "Not yet."

  "Okay. We'll think about that. Clarence also got a hit on the prints through Interpol."

  "Who do they belong to?"

  "They don't know, but they turned up in some strange places a few years ago. They have reason to believe they were left by an American agent who was involved in what they called 'extraordinary rendition.' There's not a solid connection, but he was seen in at least three places where terrorist suspects were kidnapped, and the prints were there. That man and those prints are the only ones unaccounted for at all the locations."

  "Well, that's kind of iffy," Dani said. "Not sure what it tells us, unless we can get prints for Cardile somehow. Paul said there weren't any in the States."

  "That's right, and he didn't get a match for the prints Clarence sent him from that business card, either, but listen to this."

  "We're here," Dani said, "all ears."

  "Paul had a friend of his on that DEA task force run those prints."

  "He told us that before."

  "Right. His friend got a phone call today from someone much farther up the food chain asking where the prints were found. When the guy answered, he got seriously chewed out and was told to forget the whole thing and lose those prints."

  "I don't understand," Bill said.

  "That's typical of what happens when somebody's fingerprints have been removed from the system for some reason."

  "But what kind of reason?"

  "There are several that come to mind. The prints could belong to somebody in the witness protection program, or they could be classified for any number of reasons if they belong to certain types of undercover operatives, even military black ops people, sometimes."

  "I see," Bill said, still looking puzzled.

  "Are you and Paul coming out the same place I am on this?" Dani asked.

  "Where are you coming out?"

  "Cardile has a history that started when he was in his late 20s: no military service, no police record, and no prints on file. You said even Paul was thinking he might be using a false identity."

  "We're in the same place."

  Bill said, "I'm slow at this. Help me out. You think Cardile is this undercover agent that was kidnapping people?"

  "I don't see any firm proof," Liz said.

  "You're right, Liz. It's all circumstantial," Phillip agreed.

  "So," Dani said, "we've got a guy with no name and no identity who left his prints where terrorist suspects were kidnapped, presumably in Europe or the Middle East. He also left his prints at the Internet café in St. Pierre and on my boat in St. Pierre. We have a person with an identity that looks false who teaches with Bill and blackmailed Jane. He just happens to look enough like the guy with the unknown prints so a couple of witnesses say it could be the same man. And, we have one of the guardians of people who officially don't exist getting riled when somebody runs those fingerprints that this mystery man left on my boat. Did I miss anything?"

  "No, I think that's it," Phillip said.

  "There are a lot of things that almost make sense," Bill said. "All those facts could fit David Cardile."

  "Yes, but not all of them fit him exclusively," Liz said.

  "What are you saying, Liz?" Dani asked.

  "The killer did a poor job of framing Bill, remember, but frame him he did."

  "So?"

  "So what if he's doing a better job of framing Cardile?"

  "You have a point," Phillip conceded, "but why would he do such a thing?"

  "We don't have an answer for that; we can guess at a reason why Cardile might frame Bill, but that was done in an almost deliberately clumsy way. Now we're being offered Cardile, and the frame's much more skillfully crafted. I'm just suggesting we need to keep an open mind here. We run the risk of being manipulated."

  "What do you think, Dani?" Phillip asked.

  "The miserable bastard scratched my varnish. If I catch him on Vengeance again, the coroner can tell us who he was, if we still care."

  They heard Phillip chuckle before the connection was interrupted by a call-waiting beep. Bill laughed until he saw Dani's cold, ice-blue eyes. Then he swallowed hard and looked away. He'd seen that glint in the eyes of the killers he studied.

  "That's Sharktooth. Hang on, Phillip. I'll bridge it." Dani picked up the phone, spoke privately to Sharktooth, and switched the speaker back on. Returning the phone to the table, she said, "Sharktooth?"

  "Hello, ev'rybody."

  "Phillip, you still with us?"

  "Here."

  "Okay, Sharktooth, what did you find out?"

  "A boat lef' in the middle of the afternoon, headed north. It was on the mooring four behind Vengeance; been there from the day befo' you come. One man on the boat; he strange. Spent one afternoon in town walkin' 'roun'. He give people the name, 'Don Galligan,' when he introduce, but no Galligan come through immigration. Okay?"

  "Okay. What about the boat?"

  "Soon come. Jus' makin' sure ev'rybody still wit' me." He cleared his throat with a volcanic rumble. "The boat from FuntimeCharter.com, like all the white plastic boat. Name Sonrisa, mean smile, in the Spanish."

  "I'll get somebody to check the charter company tomorrow," Phillip said.

  "Okay, but the man name David Cardile list as captain wit' Customs and Immigration, if tha's what you lookin' fo'."

  "That's the big part, for sure," Phillip agreed. "Did he clear out?"

  "Yeah, but you know 'bout the two-week t'ing. He say he goin' to Guadeloupe when he clear in."

  "What's the two-week thing?" Bill asked.

  "Dominica lets yachts clear in and out at the same time if they're staying less than two weeks. It's meant to make it more attractive for people to stay longer than they planned, but it means you can't tell for sure when the yacht leaves or where it was bound."

  "But we already know when Sonrisa leave," Sharktooth said.

  "Right," Dani said. "Now if we just knew for sure that Jane was aboard …"

  "Soon come," Sharktooth interrupted. "My cousin run the beach bar, he see the dinghy go from Sonrisa to Vengeance. The mon climb in the cockpit an' go below. My cousin, he 'bout to sen' the patrol boat when he see a lady come up an' get in the dinghy wit' the mon. I t'ink that mus' be Jane. They go back to Sonrisa an' go below. Mon come back on deck, but not Jane. Sonrisa leave. Tha's all I find so far."

  "Did anybody get a good look at the man?" Liz asked.

  "Sure. At leas' t'ree different boat go by to visit; try to sell the mon tour."

  "I'll email you a picture," Liz said. "See if anybody recognizes the man."

  "No problem. Prob'ly tomorrow. Mos' folks go to bed now."

  Chapter 25

  Liz was in the galley assembling breakfast when Bill emerged from the aft stateroom. "Good morning," she said. "Did you manage to sleep?"

  "Not much, no."

&
nbsp; "Sorry. How about some coffee?"

  "Sure, thanks. What's on the agenda today? Should we go to the police station? I can't believe they're not coming to us."

  "We can do that; Sharktooth will probably have something for us, though. He's probably made the rounds of his friends with the picture already; they're all early risers, up hustling so they don't waste any daylight."

  "The people here come across as pretty industrious; I picked that up yesterday on our hike."

  "Dominica's one of the poorest countries in the Eastern Caribbean; people have to be industrious just to survive."

  "Yeah, I see that. It's an interesting place. When I was doing my preliminary research, I discovered Dominica has the world's highest percentage of its population over a hundred years old. The people seem happy, and they're generous with what little they have."

  "Yes. Sharktooth's great-grandfather's 105; he still goes out fishing several times a week."

  "Is Dani sleeping in?"

  "You're kidding, right? No, she's up on the foredeck with the phone. She didn't want to disturb you."

  They heard footsteps on deck, and Dani appeared in the companionway as if summoned by their thoughts. "Good," she said. "Everybody's up; I've got some news."

  "What?" Bill asked.

  "Several of the water taxi drivers who talked to the man on Sonrisa said he could be Cardile, based on the photograph, but his hair's been cut really short."

  "Crew cut?" Liz asked.

  "Shorter. Just stubble. One of them said it looked like he shaved it a few days ago, or just ran some clippers over his scalp and cut it as close as he could."

  "It has to be Cardile," Bill said. "He just shaved his head for a disguise."

  "There's more. Sandrine checked with French Customs in Guadeloupe. Sonrisa cleared into the Saintes late yesterday, with just one person on board -- David Cardile."

  "But …" Bill interrupted, alarmed.

  Dani put a hand on his forearm. "You'd hardly expect him to list Jane as a passenger; don't get upset about that."

  "Don't they check?"

  "Almost never, especially in out of the way places like the Saintes."

  "Should we call the police there?"

  "There's one policeman in Bourg de Saintes, Bill. They'd have to send somebody from the mainland of Guadeloupe."