by Nero Blanc
“Nah, nah, nah, hold on there, Rosco. I’m not touching this with a ten-foot pole. Pepper’s a good guy and all that, and I feel sorry as hell for him . . . but I got enough around here to keep me busy for a year.” A large, pudgy hand gestured toward a row of pending files stacked on a folding metal table.
“I’m just asking you to run it down to your lab, Al. Have Abe or someone draw me a printout. TX doesn’t do DNA work. They have to send it to Boston. Takes forever.”
“Rosco . . .” Lever shook his head as if he were speaking to a child. “You know full well I can’t run blood work through my lab without opening a file on it.”
“Right . . . Well, you’re going to have to investigate this thing sooner or later, so I figured—”
“That’s where you’re wrong, bucko. That boat burned at sea, as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t care where it was towed—or by whom. It’s federal jurisdiction. This entire matter has nothing to do with my department. You want DNA work? Go talk to the feds.”
“Come on, Al, the FBI won’t do this kind of thing for a PI, and you know it. All I want to know is: Whose blood did I lift? It may be nothing—a boating accident, no more. But where’s the harm in checking? At least get me a male/female readout.”
Lever sighed, smashed out his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and placed his hands behind his head. “You never give up, do you, Polly—Crates? A shame you didn’t stay on the force. We need cops like you.” Then, almost to himself, he added, “Damn shame about the Peppers . . . Tom’s a solid citizen. He’s been real good for this burg.” After that, Al resumed his gruff demeanor.
“Where’d this stuff come from, anyway? Not off the Orion, because I looked her over . . . On my own time . . . Hell, a celebrity goes to Davy Jones’s locker . . . In Buzzards Bay . . .” He shrugged. “What can I say, it piques your interest. I’ve even watched that ‘soap’ on occasion . . . And, yeah, before you ask me . . . I also took a gander at those photos in that tabloid . . . Some looker . . .”
Rosco chuckled. “A gander, Al?”
“Hey, come on, Polly—Crates, you know how it is . . . The wife buys one of those rags at the supermarket . . . It’s lyin’ there on the kitchen counter—”
“Uh-huh . . .”
But Al was not to be bested. “You gotta get yourself a wife, buddy, if you don’t believe me.”
Rosco’s thoughts inadvertently leaped to Belle. He couldn’t imagine her purchasing supermarket tabloids, but then there were facets to her personality he hadn’t yet discovered. “I had a wife, Al, if you remember.”
“Two years don’t count. It’s like a trial run. A ‘starter marriage’—like the comics say.” Lever lit up again and immediately started hacking. “Besides,” he wheezed, “that was a long time ago.”
When the coughing attack had subsided, Rosco said, “I took the samples from the boat that hauled in the Orion.”
Lever sat up straighter in his chair. “So?”
“So, I thought you might be interested.”
The answer was a grudging: “I’m all ears, Polly—Crates. But make it snappy. This isn’t a social gathering.”
Rosco chortled again. Despite the curt response, he knew he had a fish on the line. He began sharing what he knew about the Dixie-Jack charter, Ed Colberg, and the disappearance of Stingo and Quick. Rosco omitted Pepper’s run-in with the Coast Guard—and Belle’s bizarre crossword puzzle. He sensed quotations from Shakespeare might stretch the limits of Al’s patience—or imagination. After Rosco had finished, Lever picked up the manila envelope and tapped it thoughtfully in the palm of his hand.
“So, what are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying that something’s fishy, Al. And I’d like your help. Just have your lab identify whether the blood’s male or female—how’s that?”
“I can’t buck the FBI. I have no jurisdiction here, Rosco. Besides, even if I prioritize this, it would take Abe over a week to get me any lab results. This holds no priority over his backlog. You know that as well as anyone.”
Rosco groaned and slid the envelope back into his jacket.
“You’re making too much out of this, Polly—Crates. Colberg’s not stupid enough to scuttle a boat and risk a manslaughter charge while he’s at it. Especially not with a TV star on board. You’ve investigated him before. You know that he’s slicker than that.”
“Uh-huh . . . Well, thanks, Al. I’ll see ya around. Maybe play some handball like old times . . .”
Rosco stood and walked to the door, but before he could reach for the knob, Lever’s phone rang.
“Yeah. Lever here.”
Rosco watched him listening intently for a second or two, then turned to the door.
“Hold on a minute, Polly—Crates.” Lever had the receiver cupped in his left hand. With his right hand, he indicated for Rosco to wait, then hurriedly scribbled notes on a pad of paper, said a terse “Got it,” and hung up the phone.
“What was that all about?” Rosco asked.
“Someone found the Orion’s tender washed up on Munnatawket Beach.”
Rosco smiled, and tossed the manila envelope back onto Lever’s desk. “Sounds like it’s your jurisdiction, Al.”
12
“Munnatawket Beach, huh?” Rosco said as he slid into the passenger’s side of Al Lever’s unmarked car: unmarked being a stretch of anyone’s imagination. A light brown, four-door Ford sedan with bench seats, huge black tires, and three extra radio antennas was the type of car that had never seemed especially unmarked to Rosco. “Who found the dinghy?” he asked Lever.
“Some guy walking his dog. Phoned in on his cell phone.” Lever placed a red magnetized emergency flasher on the roof of the Ford and headed east on Thomas Paine Boulevard, passing through traffic signals as he picked up speed. “There’s an officer out there now; I told him to keep this guy at the scene.”
“Does the Coast Guard know yet?”
“No. I’ll radio from Munnatawket Beach after I confirm the find. I’d hate to have them scale back the search if it’s not the correct inflatable tender.” Lever glanced over at Rosco and added, “That’s a dinghy.”
“Thanks, Al.” Rosco gave the response a fair amount of sarcasm. “You’re loaded with information.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure . . . I know how you are with boats and water.”
Lever leveled off the Ford at fifty miles per hour as they passed the Patriot Yacht Club. Another seven or eight minutes and they were abreast of the lane that led to the Pepper estate.
Rosco shook his head. “This is going to be tough on Pepper,” he said. “If the inflatable does belong to the Orion, the Coast Guard will scale back its SAR-Op . . . or cancel the search altogether . . . You know that, don’t you?”
Lever thought for a moment. “We’re looking at close to seventy-two hours in the water in October . . . A good swimmer, with good body fat, lasts four, six hours at the most. And I mean, real good body fat.”
Rosco unconsciously glanced at Lever’s paunch, and then back to his own lean waistline.
Lever laughed. “That’s right, buddy-boy, I’d survive longer than you out in the deep blue sea. There are genuine advantages to not being such a dapper dan . . . Strict doughnut training is what I recommend for a build like mine.”
They rounded a sharp curve in the road and immediately recognized the blue, red, and white strobe lights of a patrol car. It was parked beside a low stone wall that separated the pavement from the beach—a mile-long stretch of sand that had been named Munnatawket centuries ago by the Native Americans. A rough translation—“Beautiful Place.” In the distance, Rosco could see small waves gently lapping at the shore. He found himself wishing Belle were with him, not Al, and that they were on their way to this secluded spot for an undisturbed afternoon picnic.
The two men stepped from the car and walked through a break in the wall designed for access by summer bathers. A sign stated that the beach was PRIVATE, NEWCASTLE RESI-DENTS ONLY, and that anyon
e wishing to use it must wear or carry an APPROPRIATE TAG. Despite the intrusive modern directive, the place seemed timeless and serene. Rosco gazed at the scene while he trudged through the sand beside Al.
The depth of Munnatawket Beach varied with the seasons. During the summer, at low tide, it was close to fifty yards from the stone wall to the water’s edge; in winter, the beach was often eroded to fifteen feet or less—then miraculously returned the following summer. It was one of those natural phenomena that never ceased to amaze Rosco.
On this day, there were nearly thirty feet of sand; and the Orion’s rubber dinghy rested at the midpoint between the stone wall and the water. A uniformed officer stood beside it talking with a man in his late thirties. He wore a black windbreaker and baggy crimson shorts with HARVARD embroidered on the right leg. A medium-sized brown-and-black dog of questionable parentage trotted around with a frayed tennis ball in her mouth. She had white paws and no tail. When she saw Rosco, she bounded toward him and dropped her ball at his feet; her eyes were winsome; she recognized him as an easy touch. Rosco played into her hands, picking up the ball and tossing it down the beach. By the time they’d reached the inflatable, she was back, again depositing the ball at his feet. He tossed it a second time. The dog’s owner laughed and said, “There’s a sucker born every minute. She’ll never leave you alone now; she’s a definite ball-a-holic.”
“That dog should be on a leash,” Lever said, directing the complaint to the uniformed officer.
The officer, dog owner, and Rosco all looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “It’s October,” they muttered in unison.
“City ordinance,” Lever answered, although his tone was surprisingly mild.
He and Rosco began pacing the tender’s perimeter, studying the dinghy without disturbing it. The word Orion had been stenciled on both sides of the black rubber bow, while a large gash had opened the port side, leaving the tender as deflated as a discarded inner tube. An eight-horsepower outboard engine was still bolted to the stern, the propeller arm partially covered in drifted sand like the limb of a French Legionnaire long dead in some Moroccan desert. Two feet of nylon towline remained attached to a hard plastic cleat at the bow.
Lever again focused on the uniformed officer, “So, what do we have here, Stuart? Talk to me.”
“Well, Lieutenant, this is Mr. Mitchell.” He pointed to the man in the Harvard shorts. “He found the inflatable about an hour ago. He knows more about it than I do.”
Lever glanced at his watch, then to Mitchell. “About eleven-thirty? That’s when you showed up?”
“Yep.”
“You didn’t touch it, did you? You didn’t move it?”
“Nope. Just called 911.” Mitchell instinctively pulled his cell phone out of his windbreaker.
“Stuart? You touch anything?”
“No, sir, I didn’t move anything either.”
“What about these footprints? Those belong to you, Mr. Mitchell?”
“I guess. Most of them, anyway. I walked around the tender a little. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. It looked like a beached sea turtle from a distance. There’ve been a few of them lately. The water’s been really warm this year—”
“How often do you come out here?” Rosco interrupted.
“Just about every day.”
“So this wasn’t here yesterday?”
Mitchell thought for a moment. “Actually, I didn’t come out yesterday. I had a lunch meeting. But it definitely wasn’t here the day before. Tuesday, that is.”
Rosco looked up and down the beach. There wasn’t another soul in sight. “Aren’t there usually more people out here?”
Mitchell also studied the scene. “Not this time of year. I can go for weeks without running into anyone . . . That’s why I don’t keep Sally on a leash. There’s no one for her to bother.”
“Do you live nearby?”
“No. That’s my Saab over there.” He pointed to a green car on the other side of the wall. “I live downtown. I just bring Sally out here at lunchtime to let her run off steam. She drives me crazy if I don’t.”
Lever sighed and said, “I’m going to radio the Coast Guard. I hate to say it, but there’s no point in them searching for something they won’t find . . . My guess is that the ladies just made the missing-and-presumed-dead list.” He dropped his hands into his pockets and strolled slowly back to the Ford.
Rosco stepped away from the dinghy and looked toward Buzzards Bay, then studied the sand. “Does the tide usually come up this high?”
Mitchell picked up the tennis ball and tossed it for Sally. “Well, that’s the strange thing. No, it doesn’t . . . We had a full moon, though, so I suppose the tide could have been running unusually high . . . But I didn’t see high-water marks in the sand near the inflatable . . . On the other hand, we’ve had a lot of rain . . . Maybe it erased the Tuesday night’s waterline . . . Or, someone could have pulled the tender up here, and didn’t bother to report it.”
Mitchell again threw the ball for the persistent Sally, who went tearing after it for all she was worth. A spray of sand flew in her wake. “But, if that’s the case,” he continued, “whoever it was would have had to carry the tender, because there aren’t any drag marks in the sand . . . Leaving you with a lot of possibilities, but no real answers, huh?”
Rosco smiled. “You should be a detective, Mr. Mitchell. Is there anything else that seems unusual to you?”
“I don’t know. I wish I’d paid more attention to the footprints when I walked up. I can’t tell if they’re all mine or not.” He crouched down and studied the long gash on the inflatable’s port side. It appeared as if the rubber boat had been sliced open with some rough-edged power tool.
“What do you think did that?” Rosco asked. “Do you know anything about sailing?”
“Not much. I do a little surf fishing, deep-sea, once in a while . . . Maybe a swordfish could do something like that. But I don’t think many come into the bay . . . Maybe a propeller, if the tender were submerged and was hit by a motorboat . . . There are sharks, of course.” Mitchell shook his head. “I really feel sorry for those women. I didn’t know them, but it’s sad when something like this happens. I almost wish I hadn’t found the thing.”
“What’s up?” Lever asked in a disinterested tone as he returned from the Ford.
“Not much,” Rosco said. “We were just trying to figure if the tide carried the tender this far—or if someone dragged it out of the water. What did the Coast Guard say?”
Lever lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the sand at Rosco’s feet. “As far as they’re concerned, the party’s over. No one could make it this long in that water . . . They’re diverting all efforts. They’ve got a Japanese tanker taking on water off the cape and they’re scrambling to contain the oil spill and airlift the crew. It’s a matter of priority at this point.”
“Pepper’s not going to like that . . . What about opening an investigation? Now that you’ve got the dinghy.”
Lever gave Rosco a forced smile. “Thanks to you, my good friend, the Coast Guard has asked me—and my overworked department—to conduct a preliminary into this one. My forensics people will check out the inflatable and the Orion. If they come up with anything fishy, the feds will make a decision on how to handle it . . . Thanks, Rosco, old buddy, I really needed this one.”
Rosco held his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m here to help.”
“Great . . . Happy to hear it. Why don’t you start by ‘helping’ Stuart load that tender into the back of his squad car. Maybe he’ll even give you a lift into town if you’re real nice to him.” Lever turned and walked toward his Ford. “I’ve got work to do,” he muttered.
“Have the lab check out the Dixie-Jack, too,” Rosco called after him, “and check out those blood samples.”
The three men watched in silence as Lever drove off. “You guys need a hand with this thing?” Mitchell eventually asked.
Stuart shrugged. “I think we ca
n handle it, Mr. Mitchell.” He positioned himself over the outboard motor and added, “You’d think the weight of this engine would make it sink, wouldn’t you?”
They looked at each other, then at the deflated tender, then back toward each other. Rosco was the first to speak. “I can double-check with Ed Colberg, but it’s my understanding that the dinghy would remain seaborne—despite the loss of air. Rubber’s pretty buoyant. Look at all those empty tires that wash up. They’re full of water and they still float.”
“That’s it,” Mitchell said as he snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something else I thought of while I waited for you . . . Look at this beach.”
Rosco and Stuart stared at the length of empty sand.
“Yes?” Rosco asked.
“Waterlogged tires. That’s just it! There aren’t any. No driftwood. No dead turtles. That’s what makes this such a great beach in the summer; no seaweed or debris . . . and that’s also why no beachcombers are here off-season . . . There’s something about the way the cove is situated in the current . . . It’s really unusual for anything to wash up here.”
After Rosco and Stuart had stowed the inflatable in the trunk of the patrol car, they returned to Newcastle at a leisurely pace. The officer dropped Rosco at his Jeep, then continued down the ramp leading to the morgue and forensics lab below police headquarters. Rosco slid behind the Jeep’s wheel, started the engine, then entered his office number into his car phone and waited for it to pick up. He had three messages: the first from Tom Pepper, anxious for information; the second from a man claiming to work for A.M.I.; the third message was from Belle.
Rosco smiled at the sound of her voice, but the longer he listened to the message, the more his smile faded.
“Rosco, it’s me . . . Where are you? I’ve been trying your car phone like crazy. Call me as soon as you get this . . . No wait, don’t call me. I’m starved. I’ll be at Lawson’s Coffee Shop . . . It’s quarter to one right now. I don’t have any food in the house . . . well, nothing you’d call food . . . You’re not going to believe this. Someone sent me another crossword puzzle. I’ll bring it to Lawson’s. I won’t order anything until you get there, so don’t take forever . . .”
