“I guess there were three sets of prints lifted from the boat. One belonged to Kelly, one to Marcy, one to their son Bryant. That was it.”
“Let me guess, your boy Winston got wind of this and tried to accuse Mrs. Wilbanks of having something to do with it?” Meeks asked from the back.
Ames stopped so abruptly Beckett almost bumped into him. Meeks had to swing off the path to keep from hitting them both.
He raised his head towards the sky and said, “Dammit. She told me he overstepped his boundaries and started accusing her of things again. Repulsive things.
“I assumed she meant he was alluding to something between her and me again, but I would not be surprised if that’s what happened.”
He turned and glanced at each of them. “In case I wasn’t clear before, I really want to beat that son of a bitch.”
Without another word he took to walking again. He stopped after another fifty yards, raised his left arm and said, “Right here is where I found Kelly’s body, floating face down in the water. I drug him up on this grass patch and tried to revive him.”
Beckett swept his gaze over the area. “Walk me through every detail.”
Ames exhaled and said, “He was floating face down about fifteen yards off the shore line. About five yards behind him and maybe ten more on down was his boat.
“I came up the bank here and dove right in, grabbed hold and drug him to shore. I got him out of the water and tried to revive him, ran to the car to call for help, then came back and tried some more.”
“What condition was Wilbanks in when you found him?”
Ames shook his head. “I know what I remember, but Lord only knows if that’s the truth or not. I wanted so badly for him to be okay I kept telling myself he was going to make it. Paramedics said when they arrived he’d been gone for a long time, there was nothing anybody could have done.”
Beckett nodded and again swept his gaze over the ground around them. The area was beaten down flat from the foot traffic of countless investigators. “I’m guessing you didn’t happen to notice any tracks, anything unusual on the ground that night did you?”
“Not in the slightest,” Ames replied. “I hope they had the good sense to take stock of this area before they went and trampled it.”
Meeks looked down the shore line and said, “Dense woods lining the lake like this, wouldn’t be hard for a person to hide in the trees waiting for Wilbanks. Soon as he got close, make his move.”
Beckett looked over the tree line and considered the notion for a moment. “Only problem there is he’d be on land and Wilbanks would be on a boat fifteen yards out.”
“Somebody has a gun pointed at you, doesn’t matter what you’re on,” Meeks said.
“Yeah, but you’re forgetting the body didn’t have a mark on it except for those broken ribs. I doubt anybody from the shore could have done that,” Ames said.
“Or make him drown himself,” Beckett added. “And there’s no way in hell Wilbanks would have sat still and waited for someone to swim out there to him.”
“Meaning?” Ames asked.
“Meaning somebody would have to be in the water, lying in wait. Would have had to surprise him, pull him in before he had a chance to resist. Otherwise we would have seen some kind of defensive wounds.”
Ames nodded. “Came up, surprised him, wrapped his legs around him and held him under.”
Beckett looked over at Ames, then to Meeks, and nodded. He removed his blazer, kicked off his shoes, and pulled his shirt off over his head. He then took his wallet and cell phone from his pants and placed them on top of his clothes.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ames asked.
Meeks smiled and shook his head. “This is why we call this guy Lockjaw around the precinct. He’s notorious for doing stuff like this.”
Without hesitation Beckett walked into the water, moving forward in measured steps. He went forward about ten feet before pulling up and balancing on one leg. “Drops off right here, feels pretty sharp. Give me a second and I’ll tell you how far.”
Ames and Meeks waited as Beckett dropped himself into the water and out of view, then re-emerged a few seconds later. “Right about here it falls to over fifteen feet deep,” he said, walking steadily back towards them.
He marched forward with water sluicing off of him and added, “To be this late in the season, water isn’t near as cold as I was expecting. Must not be very deep at all here in the inlet.”
Ames shook his head and said, “I’ve fished this thing a dozen times with Kelly, but we’ve always been in the big fishing boat and gone out on the lake. Never even paid attention to this part. He always did say there was nice crappie through here though.”
Beckett used his blazer to dry his head and arms and pulled the shirt back on over his head. “If somebody wanted to sit in the water and wait, they could have easily enough done it. Water’s plenty deep there; man in a wetsuit could stay down for a long time without worry of hypothermia.
“Problem is though, that would be playing a lot to chance.”
“Yeah, I mean what are the odds that on a lake this size Wilbanks would stop right above somebody lying in wait?” Meeks asked.
Ames shook his head in a non-committal motion. “Could have been holed up beneath the boathouse and just followed him down here. Wouldn’t be that hard of a swim in scuba gear.”
“If we’re going there, he could have even tied himself to the bottom of the boat,” Meeks said.
Beckett shook his head and said, “Too many holes on both sides. Couldn’t have been lying in wait with scuba gear because the tanks leave an enormous trail of air bubbles behind them. Ever been by a quarry when a diver’s down? You can tell just by looking at the top of the water where they’re at.
“Also, couldn’t have tied himself to the bottom of the boat because there would have been no way of knowing which boat he’d take. It was Sunday night and the killer would have figured that timeframe was his best shot. A Congressman would be working or on the road during the week, good chance he’d be down here on Sunday night though.”
“You think it’s somebody local then?” Ames asked. Somebody that knew his patterns?”
“Local? Not necessarily. Somebody that knew his patterns? Most likely. If not, it was somebody that was just damn lucky.”
“I’d rather see prepared than lucky,” Ames said.
“Yeah, me too,” Beckett agreed. “Prepared can be tracked. Lucky can be sporadic as hell.”
Beckett ran a hand through his hair several times, spraying water off in all directions. “We know this guy couldn’t have hid in the woods here and we know...” he said, letting his voice trail off.
A few more seconds passed and Meeks asked, “You guys ever seen The Italian Job?”
Both Ames and Beckett made faces and Ames said, “With Michael Caine?”
“Naw, the new one with Marky Mark,” Meeks said.
Ames turned and glanced at Beckett, who said, “Must have missed it. Why?”
“In the beginning Wahlberg and his crew’s van gets shoved off a bridge by a band of robbers who then stand over them and fire into the water. They manage to wait them out by staying in the van and sharing these little hand held cans of air.”
Beckett nodded. “Compressed air, not too uncommon. Alright?”
Meeks nodded to the opposite shoreline and said, “How far you think it is over to the other side?”
Beckett and Ames both shifted their gaze to the opposite bank.
“Probably sixty yards or so, eighty tops,” Ames said.
Bobbing his head, Beckett said, “Definitely not too far for a man to swim. Plenty of tree cover to conceal himself in.”
“I’m thinking this guy could have come up from underneath, grabbed him before he even had a chance,” Meeks said.
“Pulls him under, put him in a leg clamp, braces himself against the boat until Wilbanks stops kicking,” Beckett finished. “Guy takes his compressed air, swims to the other
side, walks away.”
Without pause Beckett began striding back down the bank. Ames and Meeks followed behind him as he said over his shoulder, “It’s a hell of a theory, but right now all we’ve got are theories.
“Until we find something concrete out here, we still don’t even know for sure that this was a murder.”
Ames and Meeks stayed on his heels as he circled the end of the lake, moved around the boathouse and started up the other side. A few yards down he stopped.
“Let’s fan out. Keep some space between each other. We’ll sweep this as clean as we can with as little disturbance as possible.”
Ames moved a few yards to Beckett’s left, Meeks a few more beyond that. When each of them was in position, Beckett motioned and they began moving forward.
“My guess is he stayed in the woods until straight across from Wilbanks,” Beckett said. “He would have wanted to swim as short a distance as possible.”
“Yeah, but Wilbanks had his trolling motor down so there would have been no way for him to get a steady bead on where he’d stop,” Ames replied.
“From this side, there probably wouldn’t have been any need for him to wait in the water. He would have picked a place that was well concealed and slid into the water there,” Beckett said.
Ames pointed on ahead and said, “There’s a small point jutting out up there. It’s not real big, but would be plenty to conceal a single man that didn’t want to be seen.”
Beckett started to reply, but stopped as he realized Meeks was no longer with them. He turned and saw him squatted down, peering at the ground.
“You find something?” Beckett asked.
Meeks stood, raising a finger in a path that cut from where he was standing towards the bank. “Why don’t we just follow these tracks and let him show us where he went in?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Hot damn, now we’re getting somewhere,” Ames said and started towards Meeks.
Beckett raised a hand towards his back and said, “Don’t. We’ll stay fanned out and see if we can pick up anything else. We’ve been assuming this guy was working alone, but we don’t know that for sure.”
Ames paused for a second and looked up to the sky. “You’re right. That was stupid, just got a little excited there.”
Beckett considered responding with something to say it wasn’t a big deal, but elected to remain quiet.
Sometimes what a man’s ego needs is just to be left alone.
When Ames was back in position Beckett said, “Devin, keep an eye on those tracks. They start moving in on Ames or disappear, you let us know.”
“Aye aye, boss,” Meeks said as the three moved forward. They continued marching on through the woods for another fifty yards or so, every now and again Beckett asking to make sure the tracks were still there.
“Looks like he turned here,” Meeks said after a while, their position matching where they previously were on the opposite bank.
Ames floated to his left and picked up the tracks pinching inward. “Right up here’s that point I was telling you about. I bet anything that’s where he went in.”
Beckett spotted the outcropping and grunted his agreement, the group moving forward as Ames drifted over with the trail.
Just shy of the point, he passed the trail off to Beckett.
The trail was thin at best, the path of a man that was traveling quick and light. The steps were far apart and looked as if the person were running and in some places disappeared for ten feet or more at a time before another indentation could be spotted.
Taking a hard turn, the trail seemed to stop just short of the point. Beckett called the others over and squatted down to decipher the tracks.
“Looks like he stopped here to do some surveillance.”
“Stopped right there, sat down and waited Kelly out,” Ames said, motioning with his chin towards a spot of flattened leaves. “Sat with his back against the tree like he was on a damned picnic and waited for my friend to walk into his trap.”
Beckett’s gaze followed the trail from the base of the oak on ahead.
“When he saw his target, he moved on down to the point and entered the water.”
They stood three across where the tracks seemed to disappear, each of them replaying what had happened in their heads. The sound of a cicada passed through the trees as the morning sun danced off the water, pulling sweat from their faces.
“Come on, let’s see where he came out,” Beckett said. He and Ames walked side by side with Meeks behind them, scanning the ground.
Forty yards up the bank they found what they were looking for. Two perfect shoe imprints with a long slice of earth stripped bare behind one of them. A handprint was pressed into the ground beside it as the trail moved on into the woods.
Beckett knelt beside it and shook his head. “Devin, what does this tell us here?”
“Um, that he slipped coming out of the water?”
Glancing up, Beckett said, “Alright, let me try again. What does this tell us that we can use?”
Meeks opened his mouth to speak, but ended by raising his eyebrows and shaking his head.
Beckett removed his wallet from his jeans and opened it. It was still damp from riding in the back of his wet jeans and he had to wrench two bills free and peel them apart.
Placing a one dollar bill on the ground beside the foot and hand prints he said, “We now have a general size of the killer. Judging by this, he wears a size eleven shoe and has hands that are about proportionate. Not a large man, but not a tiny one either.”
Meeks nodded his head and looked at the prints. “How dense is the ground there? Any chance he left a fingerprint in the mud?”
Beckett shook his head. “Nothing with that kind of detail.”
Ames looked at Meeks and said, “How would we have gotten it out of here anyway? Mud’s not exactly a stable medium to be taking prints from?”
“I’ve read before that we could take a digital photo of the print and then feed that into the database and run it. I guess one time they were able to lift a print from a wet bar of soap,” Meeks replied.
Unable to tell if he was being told the truth or fed a lie Ames looked at Beckett, who nodded in agreement.
The three stood and surveyed the area for a moment longer before Beckett said, “Nothing more to be seen here. Let’s follow these tracks and see where they take us.”
He stood on one side of the tracks with Ames on the other, Meeks behind them, and wound their way back through the woods. The return trip swung wide from the lake through heavy brush, the tracks harder to follow as a thick layer of leaves covered most of the ground.
It took them almost half an hour to cover the quarter-mile trail. Twice they nearly lost it altogether, each time lucky they were able to pick it up again. The first time a ball of mud lying on a bed of leaves told them they were going in the right direction, the second time nothing more than a smudge of moss on a felled tree.
The trail ran through the woods and exited onto the property of Wilbanks’ closest neighbor. It disappeared into the thick green of the yard, the road only fifty yards on ahead.
“You know anything about the owners of this house?” Beckett asked.
Ames shook his head. “No, not really. These houses out here turn over a fair amount. High priced businessmen, attorneys, doctors come to Boston and stay a few years.
“Most of them buy these places, do little more with them than mow the place once a week and move on.”
Meeks looked from the trail to the road and said, “You think the house has anything to do with it or he was just trying to get to the road?”
Surveying the house, Beckett said, “Probably just looking to get out of here, but since we’re here we might as well go ask.”
He started to walk towards the front door, but Ames reached out a hand and said, “Hold on. Right now none of us are in uniform and we’re here on foot having just emerged from the woods. Let’s walk back, I’ll get my truck and pull up so t
hey can see me coming. No point in scaring them off us before we have a chance to ask anything.”
Beckett looked from Ames to the door and nodded. “Alright. We’ll stay by the boathouse with our cars, wait for you there.”
Ames nodded and jogged on ahead as Meeks and Beckett stayed along the edge of the woods and walked towards the road. When they got there they turned towards the Wilbanks’ as Ames drove by them in his pickup.
He threw them a wave as he passed and a moment later turned into the driveway of the stately brick home.
By the time Beckett and Meeks reached their car, Ames was already back and pulling in beside them. “Not a soul around,” he said, rolling down the window and looping his elbow out over the door. “I called down to the courthouse and asked them to contact records and get back to us with who owns the place. Said the records girls just left for lunch, but they’ll get back to us as soon as they know anything.”
The mention of lunch jarred Beckett, who lifted his gaze to see the sun now high overhead.
“What say Devin and I run back into town and see what we can dig up in our files on Wilbanks? You get a name or an employer, you call us. If he’s out here we’ll come back and pay him a visit together, if he works in the city we’ll stop by and say hello ourselves.”
Ames nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I am going up to the house to check on Marcy and the kids, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
Beckett bade him goodbye, told Meeks to follow him and fired up his truck. The old diesel engine rumbled to life as he pulled out of the yard and onto the road.
He had just reached 26 when his phone rang, Ames’ number appearing on the caller ID.
“We don’t have to wait for records,” he said without preamble. “Marcy just told me the guy that owns the house is Milton Hughes. He’s a CPA for Webster & Webster down on State Street.”
“I know the place,” Beckett said. “We’ll swing by the station to drop off my truck and head right over.”
Dear Michael,
Last night I had a dream. I had a dream that I awoke and watched the moonlight hold you as you slept so sound. For the briefest of moments I was happy, thinking you were finally back where you belong.
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