Collateral Damage (3 page)

“Any connection between the girl and Mr. Garrison?” I asked.

J.D. leaned forward in her chair, reaching again for the cup sitting on the coffee table. “We haven't had time to establish anything except that Mrs. Garrison never heard of her. Katherine had come to the area by herself and was staying at a small bed and breakfast on Anna Maria. We found the key in her pocket. We'll check all that out.”

“How did you know she was missing?”

“We didn't,” said Jacobi. “We found her body while we were looking for Garrison.”

“Any evidence on the boat?” I asked.

“The crime-scene unit from Manatee County is going over it as we speak,” said J.D. “I doubt they'll find much with all those people tramping through it.”

“You said the bodies washed up on Sister Keys. Do you think they were in the water when I was picking up those three people?”

“I doubt it,” said Jacobi. “It actually looks as if they were thrown overboard and may have been washed up on shore by the movement of the boats trying to get
Dulcimer
off the bar and underway to her berth. They weren't in the water very long.”

I sat for a beat, thinking. “Do you see this as a crime of opportunity, random, or what? It seems awfully coincidental that the grounding gave the murderer the opportunity to strike in the confusion.”

“We agree with you,” said J.D. “The medical examiner will do an autopsy on the captain today. He may not have died of natural causes.

“Look,” she continued, “I know you didn't see the bodies, but give me a minute-by-minute description of what you did see. There may be something there that'll give us a lead.”

I took her through the minutes from the time I saw
Dulcimer
making her way up the channel until I pulled into the dock at Moore's.

J.D. was quiet for a moment. “You said the pilothouse was dark before the other lights went out. Isn't that unusual?”

Jacobi and I both shook our heads. “No,” he said. “The captain would have kept the pilothouse dark so that he could see better outside. His instrument lights glow red, so even they wouldn't have been visible from Mr. Royal's vantage.”

J.D. nodded her head, accepting the explanation. “How long after the lights went out did the boat run aground?”

“Seconds,” I said. “No more than a minute. I was still running alongside at idle speed. She was moving at maybe ten knots. She would have gotten by me quickly if she hadn't hit the bar. When she stopped, I was still beside her, back near the fake paddle wheel.”

“Was she still moving at the same speed?”

That stopped me. I sat upright in my chair. I was thinking about the exact second when
Dulcimer
grounded. It had been quiet except for the nervous chatter of the passengers. When the music died, so did the engine sounds. That was the reason I thought of her as a ghost ship as she was sliding by me. The big diesels were quiet.

“The engines had been shut down,” I said.

“When?” asked Jacobi.

“I don't know. Let me think.”

I closed my eyes, trying to get back to the very moment that I became subliminally aware that the engines had shut down. “Just as I crossed her bow, I heard the engines race, as if someone was pouring the fuel to them. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped. Somebody shut them down. She'd gotten a little burst of speed, and then drifted onto the bar. She hit pretty hard, though, so she had some speed on.”

“How much time elapsed between the time the engines were shut down and the boat went dark?” asked Jacobi.

“Immediately. Or almost immediately. I think whoever shut the engines down did so by turning off the ignition and probably reached over and turned off the generator. It was that fast.”

“And how long before the Coast Guard boarded and fired the generator back up?” asked Jacobi.

“Let me think. I radioed Cortez as soon as the lights went out. In the few seconds it took to get a response,
Dulcimer
grounded and the screaming started. I'm not sure I even got the transmission off before she hit the sandbar. I think it was probably ten minutes before the Coasties arrived on scene and boarded. Somebody apparently went to the pilothouse and kicked over the generator. I'd say fifteen minutes tops, but the Coast Guard log will probably give you a better time line.”

“I've already ordered that,” said Jacobi. “We'll match the log to your recollection.”

“You might want to talk to Logan Hamilton,” I said. “He was there the whole time.”

“We will,” said J.D. “Anything else, Mr. Jacobi?”

He shook his head. “I think we're through for now. Thank you, Mr. Royal.”

They stood, shook hands, and left.

I took my paper and coffee onto the patio. It was getting warmer as the sun rose higher. I was starting to feel a sheen of sweat brought on by the high humidity. Soon it would be too uncomfortable to sit outside. It was time for my morning jog on the beach.

I was just tying my running shoes when my cell phone rang. The caller I.D. told me it was J. D. Duncan.

“Good morning, again,” I said.

“You had breakfast yet?”

“No. I was just going out for a run.”

“If you'll join me at the Dolphin, I'll buy.”

“Does this include Chief Warrant Officer Jacobi?”

“No. He's gone back to Cortez to finish a preliminary report or something.”

“You're on. What time?”

“Right now. I'm just pulling into the parking lot.”

“See you in five.”

I put on a ball cap and drove out to Broadway, took a left on Gulf of Mexico Drive, and rode south. The royal poinciana trees that lined the road were in bloom, providing a canopy of red blossoms that brightened the island, a neat juxtaposition to the foreboding cloud that had encapsulated my paradise.

I turned into the Centre Shops, a small plaza set among seagrape trees, bougainvilleas, banyans, and other local flora. The Blue Dolphin Café was housed there and during the summer served mostly the local population. In the winter, during what is known as “The Season,” snow-birds
flocked there for breakfast and lunch giving the place a buzz that was absent in the doldrums of summer.

J.D. was in a booth near the front door. She stood as I approached. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse, blue slacks, and low-heeled navy pumps, what she called her detective uniform. Her hair was pinned back from her ears and she was smiling. Her belt held a holstered Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol, a small case for her cell phone, and the gold detective's badge. A handheld police radio sat on the table.

She gave me a perfunctory hug, the kind that our islanders almost always give, a token of friendship, no more. J.D., whose real name was Jennifer Diane Duncan, and I had become good friends in the months since she had come to our key. We'd share drinks with friends at Tiny's on the edge of the Village or Mar Vista or the Hilton or Pattigeorge's, the occasional lunch or breakfast, and sometimes we'd go off by ourselves to one of the local restaurants or take my boat to Egmont Key for a day at the beach. Our relationship never progressed beyond that, even though there were moments, like now, when my heart skipped a beat at the sight of her.

She'd been very professional that morning at my house, and I had expected nothing less. She was working a case and had a colleague from another agency with her. It would not have been seemly for her to hug the witness. She was seeking information, but she also knew that I would be more forthcoming over a leisurely breakfast than in a staring contest with the Coast Guard.

We took our seats and the waitress brought me a cup of coffee and a glass of water. One thing about the Dolphin, they knew their regulars and what the regulars liked. J.D. was already half finished with her first cup. I knew she had a large capacity for coffee, perhaps a legacy of all those years in the cop business.

“Sorry about Jacobi,” she said. “I just met him this morning when they called us out about the bodies they found.”

“Not a problem, cupcake.”

“Cupcake?”

“Um, Detective?”

“There. Isn't that better?”

“Sounds kind of formal.”

She grinned. “Yeah, but it won't get you shot. ‘Cupcake' just might.”

“Point taken, Detective.”

“I wanted to make sure you haven't thought of anything else about last night before I go talk to Logan.”

“No. I gave you and Jacobi everything I remember.”

“Okay. Just checking, Studmuffin.”

“Studmuffin?” I asked.

“You don't like it?”

“No. It fits.”

She smiled and my heart jumped up and did a little jig. “Right,” she said and gave her attention to the server who'd come to take our breakfast order.

“Is Jacobi going to be investigating the murders?” I asked.

“No. That'll fall to me. Jacobi is an accident investigator. His job is to find out what caused the boat to go aground. Since the Sister Keys are part of the Town of Longboat Key, the murders are my jurisdiction.”

“Do you see any connection between the shooting on the beach and the knifings on
Dulcimer
?”

“No. Well, at least not yet. There may be. I am curious about one thing you said this morning.”

“Yes?”

She took a bite of her scrambled eggs, chewed for a moment, sipped her coffee. “You're pretty sure
Dulcimer
was making the dogleg when she went dark.”

“Yes. She made the turn to the east, but never came back westerly.” “Okay. It was about that time that she headed toward you and the bar and just seconds later the engines died. Right so far?”

“Yes.”

“Almost immediately after that, the generator shut off.”

“Right.”

“Somebody had to kill both Garrison and the girl and dump their bodies overboard in the time between when the lights went out and the Coast Guard got the generator running.”

“I agree,” I said.

“Assuming these weren't just random attacks, the killer would have
had to stick close to the victims so that he'd know where they were when the lights went out.”

I saw where she was going. “There had to have been at least two people involved. One to take out the captain and the other to kill the victims.”

“You're pretty good at this,” she said.

“Then we're assuming the attacks weren't random.”

“Yes. I think if the killer had just been on a rampage, he wouldn't have had a buddy in the pilothouse.”

I thought about that for a minute. “It's kind of circular reasoning, but it makes sense. Unless there was a connection between Garrison and Katherine, the killings were random. But, the very fact that there were two bad guys aboard, and the confusion on the boat was planned, would militate against the assumption of random killings. There must have been some connection between the two victims.”

“Probably so. We just don't see it yet.”

“What about a connection to the dead guy on the beach?”

“Same problem. If there is a connection, we can't see it yet. Desmond, the man on the beach, was from Atlanta, Garrison was from Jacksonville, and Katherine was from Charlotte. Katherine and Desmond were in the same age range, but Garrison was old enough to be their father. Mrs. Garrison had never heard of either Katherine or Desmond.”

It was a puzzle that would not be solved that morning. What I didn't know was that it wouldn't be solved over the next month either.

We finished our breakfast, catching up on island gossip and speculating more about the murders. On Longboat Key, a detective's job is mostly about investigating car break-ins at the North Shore Road beach access or the occasional home burglary. Homicide seldom intrudes on our cosseted island, but murder was no stranger to J.D., and I knew she'd handle these with the same intensity she'd brought to her job in Miami.

It was the middle of June and still chilly. The last of the snow had finally melted and little green shoots of grass were tentatively poking their heads out of the newly thawed North Dakota dirt, as if sniffing the air to make sure the temperature had risen to the point of survival. The large man was bent over a tire, snapping it to the rim. He'd finish and put the tire on the car, tightening the lug nuts and handing the keys to the lady sitting in the small waiting room.

He was glad to see spring. The frigid hours in the unheated garage with only a small electric space heater to break the grip of the freezing air were over for a few months. He was tired, his back starting to bother him already, months before his twenty-third birthday. What would he be like at fifty? Old? Like his dad, a man wasting away in this little garage in small town America, a forgotten village in a corner of the upper Midwest.

He finished the tire, went inside and took a credit card from the woman who'd taught him in fifth grade over at the town elementary school. They chatted a bit, mostly about other children with whom he'd grown up. Some had gone off to college or the military, and others had stayed in the dismal little town, eking out a living farming or working construction, what little there was of it, or carrying a badge, working for the local sheriff.

He'd always known that he wasn't college material. He just didn't have the head for it. He'd learned the mechanics trade at the knee of his father who'd run this one-man garage since he'd returned home from military service. It was now a two-man operation, with the old man working as hard and as long as the son. The business provided a modicum of income, enough to keep his mom and dad in food and shelter and now to pay a salary to the son. The boy had worked in the garage part-time since
he could remember, and on the day he graduated from high school, he became a full-time employee.

The young man, whose name was Marcus, was looking forward to the evening. He'd been dating one of the Osburn girls for several months, the younger one named Riley, and today was her twenty-first birthday. On their last date the unspoken promise had been made, that on the day she turned twenty-one she would offer him her virginity.