Echoes

by Laura K. Curtis

  He took her back to the marina in Marigot to eat. Waiters from every restaurant they passed on the boardwalk along the water stepped out to talk to Mac and introduce themselves to her. No wonder he had found her so effortlessly—he had connections. He took her to a spot next door to the one she’d chosen the night before, explaining that he liked it for both the food and the view. At first, she didn’t understand, as all the bistros looked out over the water, but when the waiter gestured for them to take what she assumed must be Mac’s “regular” table, his meaning became clear.

  At the southeast corner of the U-shaped boardwalk, the restaurant offered no indoor seating, but Mac sat them with their backs to the small building housing the bar, the kitchen, and the restroom. From their vantage point they could watch all the comings and goings along the waterfront.

  “This is where you were last night, how you found me.”

  He nodded. “Choosing tactically advantageous spots becomes second nature after a while. If you’d decided to go to Grand Case or Philipsburg for dinner, I’d have had to wait for someone to call me.”

  “Like they did today.”

  “Exactly.” The waiter came over with menus and took their drink orders—coffee for Mac, diet soda for Callie—and the moment he left, Mac began questioning her.

  “Why did you change your mind about leaving the island?”

  She answered with a question of her own. “Did you see John on TV this morning?”

  Mac grimaced. “Yeah. Slow news day in the US, I guess. And it didn’t endear him to the gendarmes any. But why does it make any difference to you?”

  “It’s true what he said about how she’d been anchored to something?”

  “Yeah. The gendarmes think whoever tied her used twine or something and didn’t realize how tight they would have to tie it for her not to . . . You don’t want to hear this.”

  “Just say it.”

  “You tend to think of a body bloating in the water. And it does. But once that happens, the skin, the flesh become loose, tearable. Hers tore and she came . . . unmoored. Floated.”

  The waiter came back with their drinks, but Mac sent him away without ordering food.

  “Do you think her murderer wanted her to stay hidden?”

  “It’s not as black and white as it sounds. The guy’s smart enough to kill a woman and get her out into the water without anyone noticing. So we can’t afford to consider him an idiot. But she washed up in Plum Bay. Do you know how the island is shaped?”

  “Not really, but I have a map.” She dug through her purse and pulled it out, along with a ballpoint pen.

  “Okay.” He took the map of the heart-shaped island and circled a spot at the top left, almost due west of the marina where they sat. “That’s Plum Bay. Sticks out into the middle of the Caribbean, so on the face of it you’d think it wasn’t such an unlikely spot for a body to wash ashore. But this island isn’t just half-French and half-Dutch; it’s half-Caribbean and half-Atlantic. Why would you dump a body you were trying to hide into the Caribbean, where it’s likely to get far less damaged, and where people scuba dive all over the place, when the Atlantic is just around the other side of the island? There would be some logic to it if you believed Nikki had been killed at the Paradis, because Plum Bay is the closest publicly accessible beach. But it didn’t go down that way. For all the privacy the Paradis offers, no one takes one of the boats from there without someone noticing.”

  “Except you or John. Which is why the police suspect one or both of you.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, then, what if there was no boat? The beach at the Paradis has cliffs above it. What about if someone lured her up there and killed her, then tossed her over?” Even as she asked, she marveled at her own ability to be dispassionate. She should have been sickened, and maybe she would be. Later. When she had time to think things over. But right now, she craved knowledge, information to help her find her footing in the landscape that had begun to shift the moment she first found her father’s picture.

  “The gendarmes went over that area when Nikki first disappeared. So did I.” Mac’s coldness matched hers. She could almost rationalize his lack of emotion—he’d been a cop, after all—but he was talking about his wife, and his detached tone gave her chills. “There aren’t any signs of a struggle, and he’d have to give her a hell of a push to get her far enough out to actually hit deep water. Plus, the body didn’t appear damaged enough to have tumbled like that. No, he took her body out in a boat, probably no more than a few miles, and dumped her over the side.”

  “Why?”

  “The only thing that makes sense to me is that he wanted her found. He tied her loosely so she’d . . . decay . . . for a while, but left her close enough to shore that the current wouldn’t sweep her out to sea entirely when the ropes came off.”

  Okay, that officially freaked her out despite her preoccupation with her own situation. “That’s unthinkable.”

  “To you, to me, to any normal person, yeah.” He seemed about to say more, but the ringing of his cell phone, sitting on the table between them, cut him off.

  Chapter Five

  Mac glanced down at the phone’s display, the caller ID showing his partner’s personal number. Mac had dropped the note Callie had signed the night before at the station first thing that morning, and apparently Michel had already contacted the lab about adding Vince’s name to the report request. Whatever had turned up, it wouldn’t be good. If Callie’s DNA hadn’t rung any bells, Vince would just have e-mailed him an aggravated note about wasting department time and resources.

  “What the hell have you stepped in this time, Brody?” Vince didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You want me to tell you? I’ll tell you. The captain wants your ass back in Georgia, pronto. He’s pissed. Your friend the French cop apparently chose to go the paternity-test route for quick results on the DNA, so we got the profile you told me about this morning rather than tomorrow. We ran your little request about an hour ago, and it brought the fucking feds down on us.”

  The feds? He looked over at Callie, whose eyes were fixed on him as she tried to hear what his partner was saying. “Shit,” Mac said into the phone. “What do they want?”

  “They want to know why we’re running DNA belonging to someone who has three dead half sisters, possibly victims of a serial killer, and a half brother in jail for rape.”

  “Whoa. Back up. That’s all one family?”

  “No. It’s three families, but all parties have the same father. Don’t ask how, since no one is owning up to affairs or adoption. Girls one and two were thirty-five-year-old fraternal twin sisters, both disappeared from Virginia almost three months ago, presumed dead. Their DNA came from Missing Persons. Dead girl three’s body was found five weeks back in an abandoned rental car in DC. Vehicle rented with phony ID, needless to say. No ID on the body. Plenty of blood, though, so they ran her through the databases. No complete matches, but the vehicle had been set on fire, too, so they went for partial matches as well, and Missing Persons came back with the twins—same paternity. Running paternity, CODIS found someone, too, another half sibling: Ed Steele. You might recognize his father: the televangelist named Ephraim Steele, who went down for embezzling twenty years or so ago.

  “Anyway, Ed’s a real piece of work. Been in prison in Florida for five years so far. He was a federal case—rapes in three states—so pinging his DNA brought them back. Plus, dead girl three was eventually identified as Robin Cory, who has international ties, which fucks the whole thing up even worse. And then there’s your girl. Feds want to know who she is and where they can find her. Since I don’t happen to have that information, life’s not too pleasant around here at the moment.”

  “The report Michel sent, does it show just one profile, or two?”

  “Just one.
There’s a notation at the bottom that says ‘no match to second sample,’ and indicates that further tests will be done, but we didn’t get anything on another sample.”

  What the hell? “No match?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But he only called for a straight paternity test.”

  “Yeah. Looks like he went for speed, with full profile to follow.” Mac would probably have taken the same route. After all, no one knew who Nikki’s father was, which made him the most likely point of connection between her and Callie. And whatever the genetic testing might show, Mac refused to believe the connection didn’t exist. Could that possibly mean the dead woman wasn’t Nikki? But then how did she get hold of Nikki’s ring?

  “Thanks, Vince. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Like hell! You gotta give me something. I can’t stall these guys forever. I’m going to have to tell them how my name happened to end up on a DNA request from a French cop on a minuscule Caribbean island. Especially since not one of the connected cases come under our jurisdiction.”

  “Do it. Give them my name and Michel’s, but leave Callie’s out of it.”

  “Who?” He could practically hear his former partner’s smirk. “You mean Subject AXP8834201? The unnamed female whose saliva the French cop sent in for testing?”

  “Yeah. Her. Michel will give her up soon enough, but I need some time to stash her. Tell the chief I’m sorry about the feds.”

  “You got it. Listen, I sent all the files to your e-mail address. Don’t know that they’ll help much, and if it comes back on me I’ll fucking kill you. But I figure you need all the help you can get. Keep in touch.”

  “Thanks. Will do.” Mac snapped the phone shut and looked at Callie, who was watching him expectantly.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I have to run down the street to the Internet café and print out some e-mails my partner in Atlanta sent me.”

  “What did he say? I heard something about a family? And ‘no match’—does that mean between me and Nicole?”

  “Not now, okay? Let me get the files, and we can go over them together.” For a moment he thought she would insist on accompanying him to the Internet café, but at last she let him go. On his way out, he stopped and asked their waiter to bring them a couple of pizzas.

  Vince had sent reams of paperwork. All the crimes had taken place in urban areas with well-computerized police departments, so he’d been able to get whole case files transferred to Atlanta, much of which he’d copied and pasted into e-mail-ready documents. He’d also included links to publicly accessible newspaper articles. Somehow, the feds had kept the blood relationship between the three cases out of the press—Mac figured that wouldn’t last long—but the three women had been high-profile victims, and Ed Steele, the serial rapist, had garnered more than a few inches of newsprint himself. By the time Mac had finished printing everything, he had an inch-thick stack of paper.

  He cut through one of the many alleys leading from Rue de la Liberté to the marina, then took a step back out of sight when he realized Callie was no longer alone at the table.

  ***

  Callie hoped Mac’s errand would keep him away until John left, but doubted she’d be so lucky, especially since John didn’t seem in any rush to go. He claimed he was just having lunch, getting away from the hotel, where he felt scrutinized at every turn, but his appearance on the heels of Mac’s departure raised the hairs at the back of her neck. And his surprise at seeing her in town rang false. If Mac had connections who told him she was there, surely John had even more. But she didn’t call him on it. If he turned out to be the keeper of her family’s secrets, she needed him on her side.

  “The interview probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” he admitted ruefully as she scanned the boardwalk. “But I felt helpless. I’m in an odd position here on the island. Nicole and I inherited the hotel, which is a good chunk of real estate, but I’m not a French citizen. Nicole is—was—but my father and Ava didn’t move here until I was eleven. I had to learn French as a foreign language, and it shows. Even though I’ve lived here most of my life, I’m not considered a native. I’m still an American, an outsider, and since they’re going to treat me that way no matter what I do, I decided I might as well take advantage of the press contacts I’ve made over the years. Let the American media put a bit of pressure on and see what happens.”

  He paused, waiting for her reaction, and she couldn’t prevent herself from asking. “The other day you as much as said you believed Mac had killed her. Is that still the case?”

  “The police thought he did. Or at least, that’s what I assumed from their visit, until you told me about all the other gossip. For myself, I don’t know what to think. Dad and Ava kept the Paradis so private they never needed much in the way of security. But the resort never operated at capacity, either, and didn’t bring in the kind of money Nicole and I needed for the modernization we envisioned. I worried the old system wouldn’t suffice once Nicole and I got the place running the way it should, though, and Dad’s old head of security had no tech savvy at all. So when Nicole picked Brody up one night and brought him home, he seemed like the answer to a prayer. Five months later, they got married, and three months after that, she disappeared. What would you think?”

  “Tough call.” But she could appreciate John’s point.

  “Besides,” he continued, “there’s the trust.”

  “Trust?”

  He rubbed his head. “French inheritance law is a mess, and my father wasn’t as careful as he should have been about his assets. But the one thing he did protect was the hotel. Nicole didn’t inherit her portion of it outright. It’s in trust until her thirty-fifth birthday. My father didn’t have a great deal of respect for women’s financial acumen, I’m afraid. And since she died before thirty-five, her half of the resort and the vast majority of her personal fortune, which she also inherited from my father, reverts back to the trust. Despite the fact that she died intestate, it doesn’t, in fact, go to her husband because it was never hers to will away. So, you see, Brody would have good reason to hide the fact that she was dead. Nobody else would.”

  She did see. But Mac didn’t seem the kind of guy who put a whole lot of emphasis on material goods. She doubted he’d marry for money, let alone kill for it.

  “Who controls the trust?”

  “There are three trustees. My father made me a full partner in the resort when I turned thirty, so my half of the property isn’t in a trust. I’m the primary trustee on Nicole’s portion, along with my father’s old medical partners, and since she died before it was dissolved, the whole resort will come to me, which is another reason the police suspect me of having something to do with her death. But it’s ridiculous. The hotel is doing wonderfully, and being a trustee meant I had control over the money anyway. Nicole never disagreed with my proposals. I had the degrees; she was content to let me run the place. So I had no reason to want to hurt her.”

  The waiter approached. “Madame,” he said, after nodding briefly to John, “your friend ordered some pizzas before he left. Shall I bring them now, or wait for him to return?”

  “Why don’t you wait. In the meantime, do you think I could get another soda?”

  “But of course.” With a little half bow, he moved away toward the entrance, where a group of six waited to be seated.

  “I didn’t realize you were here with someone.” John studied her. “Damn. It’s Brody, isn’t it? He’s why you stayed.”

  “No. I meant what I said earlier: I decided against going home because there’s nothing there that can’t wait. I have Marlon’s time-share week, which would be a shame to waste, and I promised Travel/Style an article. Besides, I want to know what Detective—is it Detective? Or do the gendarmes use some other term? I want to know what Vichy discovers about any relationship I might have to Nicole. Assuming, that is, the
woman he found on Plum Bay is your sister.”

  John pushed back his chair and rose. “Right. Of course that’s what’s keeping you here. Just do me a favor and be careful with Brody. Whatever the DNA test shows, when I look at you I can’t help being reminded of Nicole. She was rich and beautiful and very much alive. Now, she’s not. She trusted the wrong person somewhere along the line, and it got her killed.”

  John started to walk away, but paused after a few steps and returned. “I realize I’m coming on a bit strong, and I apologize. If you find yourself in a jam, I hope you’ll remember I have your best interests at heart and call me. You have my number.”

  “I will,” Callie promised. She watched him stride down the boardwalk and caught the movement when Mac stepped out of a passageway only seconds after John had passed it. John, moving quickly, didn’t notice. Mac watched until he came to the end of the marina and turned for the parking lot; then he headed back to the restaurant.

  When he reached their table, Mac dropped a stack of papers on it, and Callie was surprised to recognize the face smiling out of the top sheet.

  “That’s Robin Cory. Her murder was still at the top of the news in Scotland when I was there last week. What does she have to do with this?”

  “You know her?”

  “No, but her blue-blood, American mother married a blue-collar Scot, sort of a reverse Princess Diana thing, and Robin is a Scottish citizen. Or she was. She was killed, what, a month ago in DC? I went over to Scotland to review a company that does hiking and camping vacations before I came here, and the story of Robin’s murder was inescapable.”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “What?” Callie’s mind spun in a half dozen directions. First, a possible relationship to Nicole Lewis, now one to Robin Cory. Both rich, well connected, and dead. She narrowed her eyes at Mac, willing him to continue.