The Boathouse (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 14)

by Vickie McKeehan

  Theories buzzed, thick as gnats. Everybody took turns guessing about the victims. They pondered over who had done this. From mobsters out of Las Vegas to New Jersey racketeers, the notion that an outsider was responsible seemed crazy and farfetched. By the time they were on their third cup of coffee, the truth began to sink in—the killer had to be a local. Nothing else made sense. Bodie picked up on that same theme throughout the morning—the killer was probably still living here.

  At the counter, Tinker Hardtack nudged Cora Bigelow, who hadn’t opened the post office yet. “I think we’ve got us a serial killer.”

  Cora cut her eyes to Tinker’s. “It’s only considered a serial if there are more than two victims. Right now, we’ve only got two.”

  “That we know of,” Tinker insisted. “Maybe he’s killed more, though. Maybe we just don’t know where he buried the other bodies. Could be he put more victims all around town, buried them in foundations.”

  “That’s a morbid thought,” Bodie put in, setting a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice down in front of Cora.

  “It certainly is,” Cora returned, sipping from her coffee mug. “People nowadays don’t even bother to lock their doors or close the curtains. Gladys Hargitay is convinced she has a peeping Tom running around her neighborhood.”

  Jessica St. John had been listening while she waited for her to-go order. “Not me. I always close my blinds.”

  Standing behind Jessica was Brad Radcliff, who leaned closer. Brad owned the used car lot. “I know. I’m right across the street from you.”

  Jessica nudged Brad away. “That’s not funny. People are on edge. Just about everyone who came into the clinic yesterday was on alert. They wanted their dogs healthy, even asked about training their dogs for guard duty. It’s all anyone could talk about.”

  Brad rolled his eyes. “Those bodies were in that concrete for decades. The guy who did it is probably long gone by now. Or if he hung around town after doing something like that, he’s probably dead and buried himself.”

  “That’s not true,” Cora argued, taking issue. “The killer could’ve been a very young perpetrator. Think about it. If he had been twenty at the time, thirty-five years later, he’d be fifty-five now. That’s not old at all.”

  Jessica glared at Brad. “See? Most people have put some thought into this. They take it seriously. The killer’s still out there…somewhere. Which is the reason I’m buying new locks for all my doors as soon as the hardware store opens.”

  Bodie had to take stock in her own situation. How were the locks at her house? Logan had done a fine job remodeling. But she should make an effort to check them all just in case. She thought about Tucker leaving in a few hours—and shuddered. It would be nice having Lago around for the next few days to keep her company.

  “I asked Brent to make sure his officers made more swings through the neighborhood,” Bree Dennison admitted when Margie handed over the bag of apple turnovers she’d been waiting for.

  Margie rang up the purchase before adding, “Max keeps his shotgun handy. But it’s always nice to know we have three officers we can call now instead of waiting for a response from the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Tinker said with a nod. “Damn near used to take them thirty, forty minutes to get out here sometimes, especially when Ethan Cody quit the force. Nobody around to patrol the area ’cept Ethan.”

  Bodie took note of the comments, trying to get a feel for the oldtimers who liked to start their day at the Diner come rain or shine. She hadn’t felt this much anxiety or seen this much fear since she’d started working here.

  By the time the breakfast rush had slacked off, there were rumors that the forensic team would be bringing up the first set of bones. As horrible as that sounded, she couldn’t believe so many people rushed out to the pier to watch it happen.

  “What about you?” Abby Anderson asked while she waited for an order of hash browns. “Are you planning to hurry out of here and see it for yourself?”

  Bodie looked over at the woman who worked at Fanning Marine Rescue Center. “Seeing human remains carried up the hillside is not something I want to do. You?”

  “Nope. Not my thing, either. I see enough mistreated seals and sea lions to last a lifetime. Why would I want to go out of my way to look at dead…skeletal remains.”

  “My thinking exactly.”

  “We should meet up after work for a drink sometime or maybe go out to dinner,” Abby suggested.

  “Sure. That sounds like fun. Let me know when you’re available.”

  “I’m available most any time except when I’m covering my shift. My boyfriend works clear across the country at Woods Hole. He’s also a marine biologist.”

  “Long-distance relationships are tough.”

  “Tell me about it. But that’s the reality of the situation when you take a job on either coast. Wyatt couldn’t get a job offer here. And I couldn’t get one there.”

  Bodie took out her cell phone. “Then we’d better trade numbers so we’ll be able to text each other.”

  After Abby picked up her order and left, Bodie felt good knowing she’d made a new friend. She got ready for the lunch rush by going through the same routine she did every day. She brewed a fresh batch of tea and filled up the dispenser. She made sure there was plenty of ice on hand. It wouldn’t do for people to wait for their drinks. Tips went down when that happened. She refilled salt and pepper shakers then did the same with the ketchup and mustard.

  After getting through lunch, Bodie clocked out and headed for the hardware store. She spotted Tucker helping a young woman decide which set of tools to buy. She noted he looked exhausted like he hadn’t slept a wink the night before.

  As soon as Tucker noticed Bodie, he let Owen finish up the sale. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get moving. I’m running late.” Shoving a spare house key into Bodie’s palm, he grabbed the bag he’d already packed from underneath the counter. “I’m sorry to run like this, but I’m in danger of missing my flight if I don’t leave right this second. There’s bound to be traffic, and I’m cutting it close as it is.”

  She’d never seen him so nervous. “That’s okay, go. I just came by for the key. I’ll make sure Lago’s watered and fed before I head to my regular Tuesday housekeeping job.”

  He gave her a quick press on the lips before bounding out the back door toward his truck.

  She followed him outside and watched him pull out of the parking lot, then head off down Crescent Street, a little disheartened to see him go.

  Left standing on the pavement, she studied the key in her hand. No matter how long she mulled over the situation, the key to his house represented a change in their relationship. It was a sure sign of trust. Bottom line: Tucker considered her worthy enough to take care of his dog and let her inside his house while he was gone. As she headed to her car, she didn’t feel quite so downhearted.

  Steering her Mazda toward San Pedro Circle, she drove through town, slowing down when she made the turn onto the cul-de-sac. She went up to the front door thinking about Tucker, but it didn’t last long when the Goldendoodle met her just inside the entryway, bowling her over with the energy of three dogs, his tail thumping in welcome.

  She dropped to her knees to wrap the pup up in a hug. All the while, Lago’s tongue landed several sloppy kisses on her face. Fluffing his thick, curly fur with her fingers, she rested her head on his body. “Missing him already, Lago? Yeah? Me, too. We’ll manage somehow, though, won’t we? We’ll take care of each other. Right, boy?”

  It made her feel better that Lago seemed to understand something out of the ordinary had happened. And it made her relax knowing the dog would be going home with her.

  Brent ended his long day at the medical examiner’s office. He’d dragged Eastlyn and Colt with him to take notes.

  It had taken almost forty, painstaking hours to chip away the skeletal remains from the concrete and extricate each bone from the pillar. The forensic team ha
d worked throughout the previous day and night to get it done under conditions of duress in full view of the media, who refused to budge off the pier to get a story. Instead, reporters aimed their cameras down on the scene and waited with the rest of the curious onlookers and gawkers.

  Now the pressure was on Brent to get some answers. He stood inside the morgue staring at two steel tables with the bones in place to represent two human beings.

  “You must have some idea how long they’ve been there,” Brent began, rehashing the information he already had. “1985 was the last time anyone worked on pouring concrete there. Late August, to be exact.”

  “Then that’s probably a reasonable how long they’ve been there,” Wayne Crossley muttered as he leaned across the steel table to get a closer look at one skull.

  Wayne might’ve been a newcomer to Santa Cruz County, a man who understood science and the role he played in solving murders. But he was no newbie to the pushy ways of law enforcement when they wanted to crack a cold case like this one. He’d been assistant coroner in Los Angeles County for three years before getting the offer to head up his own morgue here.

  “Just cut to the bottom line and tell me what you know so far,” Brent instructed. “At this point, I don’t even mind a little speculation on your part. How did they die?”

  “Here’s what I can tell you with some degree of certainty,” Wayne uttered, fascinated by the extraordinary condition of the bones. “One set of remains is male, the other female. See the pelvis. Both were young.” He pointed to the teeth. “See how the wisdom teeth haven’t fully developed yet. Based on that alone, I’d say these two victims were both between seventeen and twenty-one years of age when they died.”

  Eastlyn traded looks with Colt. “That’s younger than I thought. I’m surprised by that. Do we have any missing persons that fit the age group and intersect with the 1985 timeframe?”

  “I’ve gone through our old logs…twice,” Colt responded. “Nothing. Back then, any reports had to go through the Sheriff’s Department, no local law enforcement around here, which could pose a problem now.”

  “Yeah,” Brent replied. “That’s the tough part. For now, go through the Sheriff’s Department website where they list cold cases, sometimes showcasing their oldest missing persons. This time focus on victims from 1985 exclusively. Young people. If you find anything that might match, call, and ask to speak to a detective in charge. Don’t take any guff off anybody, either. Somebody murdered these kids on our turf, which means I want us working the case. Make sure they understand that we’re professionals too, and we don’t deserve the cold shoulder from the County. Tell them we want their cooperation. Tell them these kids deserve it.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Eastlyn asked.

  “You go through the archive at the library. Look for any newspaper articles from 1985 written about missing kids around the same time of year they overhauled the boathouse. I’ll take care of hunting down who had access to the construction job.”

  Brent angled back toward Crossley. “And you? The minute you decide whether you can extract DNA from bones this old, I want to know about it.”

  “That’s a given. I thought you wanted to know how they died?”

  Brent rolled his eyes. “Well, come on, now’s not the time to keep it to yourself.”

  Wayne angled toward the bones he’d slated as female. “Single gunshot to the back of her head from close range. But that’s not all. There are multiple places on the rib bones that suggest a knife cut so deep into her chest area that it nicked several bones. See the marks it left? The location certainly implies the lungs would have collapsed. If you want, I can show you on X-ray.” He pivoted to the other table, bent down closer. “Same with the male. See the size of the bullet hole in the back of the head. And notice all these cut marks on the ribcage.”

  “Stabbed first, maybe? Then to make certain they were dead, shot in the head, like an execution,” Colt murmured.

  Brent chewed the side of his jaw. “So, let me get this straight. The killer stabs them with some force, multiple times in a frenzied attack, making sure he renders them incapable of fighting back. Then after he’s certain there’s no resistance, he shoots them in the head, execution-style just in case the knife didn’t do the job. What in the world do you suppose these kids did to end up like this?”

  Eastlyn stepped closer to the bodies. “The construction crew—that’s present-day—spotted a few tatters of clothing that looked like thin scraps of blue jean material. Did you bag those?”

  Wayne nodded. “Yep. Thin strips of denim so thin you could almost see through the fabric, but we did retrieve two metal buttons when we sifted through the concrete that’s probably from the jeans. Unremarkable, though. Everything we pulled out of that pillar was bagged and sent to the lab.”

  “Okay. Good. Those bits of jeans say to me that these two were probably stuffed down that pillar wearing their clothes. No sign of shoes found anywhere in the concrete. No shoes, bare feet, tells me they might have been camping out on the beach and got surprised, attacked in their sleep maybe.”

  “Fully clothed would take away the sexual motivation,” Colt determined. “A frantic attack with a knife for some reason other than sex before bringing out the gun.”

  “Maybe,” Brent muttered as he took another look at the bones. “Just remember that whoever did this took the time to cover their tracks for…a long time. There must be a reason the killer didn’t leave the bodies at the point of attack, a spot where the victims were out in the open. No, our killer needed to get rid of and hide what he’d done, do whatever he could to make it go away, make these kids disappear. We figure out the why of that, and we’ll be one step closer to finding out what kind of monster did this.”

  “Yeah and right in our own backyard,” Eastlyn added. “Even if I didn’t live here back then, this is personal.”

  “Oh, it’s personal all right,” Brent spat out. “I want this bastard found. Go home and be with your families tonight. Because we ain’t sleepin’ until we find this guy.”

  Ten

  Tucker flew into Sarasota-Bradenton Airport, landing at eight-fifty that evening. He took a taxi the ten miles to his father’s condominium, a place for seniors called the Flamingo Isle Preserve. It sounded exotic, like a tropical paradise when, in reality, it was just another mid-rise apartment building with six floors and an elevator for old people.

  His dad’s condo was in the middle of the building on the third floor. Despite the fifteen hundred square foot description, he remembered a funky layout—a master bedroom to the left of the front door, a guest room on the far right and in between a living area with a place to eat set off by itself in a dark corner far removed from the kitchen.

  His mother had referred to the apartment as “the dungeon.” Compared to the house she loved in Pelican Pointe, he could see why. This place was about as nondescript and cold as a concrete vault.

  His stomach lurched in waves of nervous jitters as the cab pulled up to the curb. He paid the driver, adding a generous tip, got his bag out of the trunk and stood there looking up at the building. The taxi drove away, leaving him on the sidewalk outside the condominium he did not want to enter. The thought crossed his mind to ditch this entire idea and head back to the airport.

  But after standing there for several minutes more, Tucker made his feet move toward the door and used the buzzer to phone the apartment upstairs that he was outside.

  No answer.

  The second time, Tucker laid down hard on the buzzer and knew something wasn’t right when a strange male voice answered.

  “Who is this?” the male asked.

  “That’s what I want to know. Who are you?”

  “I’m Detective Howard Rossi. Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Tucker Ferguson, here to see my father, Joe Ferguson. Why are you answering for him?”

  “Wait right there. I’ll come down and let you into the building.”

  “Why? What’s w
rong? Where’s my father?” Without any answers, knots jumped in his gut for the entire length of time it took Detective Rossi to get downstairs.

  After several long minutes, a forty-something man stepped out of the middle elevator and opened the front door, allowing Tucker to step inside the lobby.

  The lobby wasn’t a large room, more like a vestibule where tenants collected their mail or waited for the elevators.

  The detective stuck his badge in Tucker’s face, not so much for identification, but to show him right off who was in charge. The cop spied the travel bag Tucker had slung over his shoulder. “Was your father expecting you?”

  “No. He wasn’t. Look, what is this? What’s going on here?”

  “Are you here to see your father and your mother?”

  “What? No. My mom died a few months ago. Back in March. Breast cancer. Why? What the hell is going on here?”

  “I’m sorry to be the one who has to tell you this kind of news…but your father is dead. He was shot. Upstairs. He’s been murdered. His body is still in the apartment.”

  “What? When?”

  “Sometime earlier this afternoon. We think around five o’clock. Where were you then?”

  Tucker gaped at the guy. “Thirty-six thousand feet in the air over New Mexico. Flying out of Santa Cruz, California. Why?”

  “It’s a reasonable question. And when I’m in charge of a murder investigation, I like to know these kinds of details upfront. A man’s been shot and killed. Another guy shows up claiming to be the son within hours after it happens. When shit like that occurs, I don’t accept it as a coincidence. Instead, I ask where you were when it all went down.”

  Tucker glowered at the cop. “You want to see my e-ticket stub? Fine.” He patted his pants pockets and pulled out a piece of paper, shoved it into Rossi’s chest. “There. You can also check with American Airlines. Now tell me what happened here.”