Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (15 page)

“What do we know about this killer?” I said.

“We think we know nearly everything about his past. This is all information we got from past interviews, especially two neighbors who have since died. But we know nothing about what name this killer is currently using, where he lives, or who his contacts are. We were never able to link him to the crimes other than motive on the first six victims. We had nothing with which to charge him. And over the last few years, we’ve learned nothing else.” Agent Ramos leaned back in his chair.

“Here’s what we think happened based on some interviews the FBI conducted years ago,” Ramos said. “Twenty years ago a young family emigrated from Russia. They were Cossacks. A professor of mathematics, his wife, and their three children, two boys, Petro, sixteen years old, and Mikhailo, twelve years old, and Kateryna, a girl six years old. They moved to Brooklyn where the professor got a job teaching at Brooklyn College. In less than a year, the man caught a sudden lung infection and died. After such a short period of employment, there was no death benefit for his family, and he had not purchased any insurance. His wife ended up cleaning houses to support her family.

“From the moment they arrived in America, the oldest boy did well. He was big and strong and amiable, and he got along well in his high school. But the younger twelve-year-old Mikhailo was skinny and shy and awkward, and he suffered taunts for his skinniness, his accent, his lack of sociability, and his artistic bent. Mikhailo was always drawing little sketches, and he was bullied for it relentlessly.

“In particular, there was a group of school children who were a kind of ruling clique. Most of these kids came from upper middle class families. For some reason, this clique of kids took a special dislike for Mikhailo, and they hounded him. Among other insults, the bullies would taunt Mikhailo by saying that he’d come to our country for the American Dream and, as they would strike him, they’d say, ‘Here’s your American Dream, Rusky boy.’”

“Ain’t children sweet,” Diamond said.

“They learn from their parents,” Ramos said. “One winter Saturday, Mikhailo was watching his little sister Kateryna while their mother cleaned a house that belonged to the family of one of the bullies. Mikhailo and Kateryna were walking along a small creek that flows through the nice neighborhood. The group of bullies happened upon them. They started throwing rocks. Mikhailo and Kateryna tried to run away. But the bullies jumped them, pushing Kateryna down a steep bank toward the creek and then beating Mikhailo severely, hitting him with rocks.

“Kateryna tumbled down, struck her head on the frozen ground, and fell into the creek where she drowned.

“Mikhailo was hospitalized. After he recovered, he was able to give a full and complete report of what happened, and he provided the names of the bullies. The police launched an investigation, and two of the boys, including the one who lived in the house that Mikhailo’s mother cleaned, were charged with voluntary manslaughter. However, both of those boys had well-to-do families who hired good lawyers.”

Diamond took an audible breath and sighed. No doubt this story was resonating with some previous experience he’d either had or heard about.

“In the end, the charges against the bullies were dropped, and no one paid any price except for the mother who was fired from the cleaning job. Worse, the bully’s family knew most of the mother’s other cleaning clients, and they convinced all of those families to fire her as well.”

“The making of a killer,” I said.

Ramos nodded.

“Mikhailo withdrew into his own internal world. He played violent video games. He broke off what few friendships he had. Just a few years later, he started taking steroids and working out. He went to a gym with a reputation for catering to young men with problems. There he met a guy who ran an MMA school.”

“Mixed martial arts,” Diamond said.

“Right. That man coached Mikhailo in fighting techniques. Mikhailo got better and more fanatic. He lived in a world of violence, bodybuilding for strength not show, and fighting in non-sponsored MMA events.”

“By that you mean, shadow matches?” Diamond said. “Not sanctioned by the regular fight promoters?”

 “Right. Like dog fights or cock fights. Mikhailo was christened Mikhailo the Monster. He won every fight he entered, all in the heavyweight class. And in two of them, he reportedly killed his opponent with kicks to the head, but the shadow matches are so secretive that nothing came of it. He was twenty-eight when he became a kind of unofficial national heavyweight champion, and the rumor was that the sanctioned champion on the regular circuit was afraid to fight him in any kind of match.”

Ramos, as if suddenly cold, unrolled his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs at the wrists.

“That was the year the first murder victims were found,” he said.

“The kids who had bullied him,” I said.

“Right,” Ramos said.

Diamond said, “And on each body’s arm was written, ‘The American Dream.’”

Ramos nodded. “Two of the bullies had grown up to become soldiers, but that didn’t deter their killer. In fact, we think it might have inflamed him.”

I asked, “How were the victims killed?”

“The first ones were all drowned. Their bodies were each found within a dozen miles of where they lived or worked, two in Brooklyn, one each in Newark, Atlanta, Hartford, and Buffalo. As with Amanda Horner’s body, the victims’ bodies were displayed in obvious ways so that passersby would see them, although none of the previous victims was completely submerged under water. Two were found on ocean beaches, one near a creek, two near lakes, one near a slough.”

“No witnesses?” I said.

“No.”

“And the three bodies that have been found more recently?” I said.

“Victims seven and eight were burned. Number nine was drowned. The burn victims had a type of insulating metallic tape over the writing on their arms.”

Diamond made a slow head shake. “So that when they found the charred bodies, they could peel off the tape and still find the writing.”

“Right.”

“The more recent victims weren’t bullies from Mikhailo’s past, were they?” I asked.

“Not that we can tell. We think that Mikhailo’s transformation from injured, persecuted kid to vigilante killer sated him for a few years. But it is likely that, as he endured other insults or slights over the years – as we all do – he cracked further. He was already a murderer, used to playing God with peoples’ lives. So it is possible that he couldn’t resist the pull of resurrecting his brand of justice.”

Ramos paused as if to take a breath.

“The two burn victims were being blackmailed. Apparently, they had collected cash as instructed and gone to a meeting where they were to make payment.”

“Where they were relieved of their cash and then burned?” Diamond asked.

“Yes. One was an unlicensed doctor who’d been banned from practicing medicine, yet who sold quack cancer cures to desperate, unsuspecting cancer patients. The doctor was found in an old cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. The cabin had been torched. The other burn death took place in a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. That man made his money as a Miami pimp. A couple of his sex workers had been killed by johns over the years, leading people in the trade to accuse the man of not providing even the most basic protection for his workers.”

“So both of those killings could have a vigilante component?” I said.

Ramos nodded. “And the blackmail also suggests that money was a secondary motivating factor. We don’t know how much the doctor brought to the blackmailer before he was killed. But the pimp’s associates said he was being blackmailed for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“You mentioned the six people who bullied Mikhailo when he was a boy, a pimp, and a predatory doctor,” I said. “That’s eight murders. What was the last murder?”

“A lawyer in New Orleans who sued small businesses for disability-access infractions, businesses that he’d never even patronized. He was non-disabled himself, and he drove around looking for potential victims to prey on through the court system, businesses without wheelchair-access restrooms and such. A journalist ran a series on one of the businesses that was forced to close after one of the lawsuits and reported that the owner committed suicide. The lawyer who sued the business owner was found drowned in a bayou. We have no specific evidence of blackmail. However, the lawyer withdrew fifty thousand dollars in cash from his account the day before his death.”

“All this fits with Lassitor’s drowning because he engaged in predatory patent infringement lawsuits,” I said. “And whether or not he paid money to his killer – if he was killed, that is – his widow Nadia is being blackmailed after the fact.”

Diamond was shaking his head. “But how would Amanda Horner’s drowning fit into this? The death method fits, but there is no vigilante aspect and no other apparent motive.”

“No,” Ramos said. “And that is disturbing. To have Mikhailo step outside of his MO and find other targets for his twisted violence gives us less chance of anticipating his moves.”

“It seems like he might be a suspect in Gertie O’Leary’s kidnapping,” I said, “if only because her step-child connection to Ian Lassitor seems like too much of a coincidence. But do you have any indication that Mikhailo has kidnapped in the past?”

“Not in a ransom sense, no,” Ramos said. “But it appears that he abducted several of his other victims simply for the purpose of dragging them to their death sites. The main thing we know about him is that he has no moral boundaries. In the beginning, he saw his life as a war against people in power. It may now be that he sees his life as a war against anyone in his way. If he thought that taking Gertie O’Leary was part of striking back against what he hates, the evidence suggests he’s capable of that.”

“Does he always work alone?” Diamond asked.

“We have no indication either way. But if he did bring in comrades, one would expect him to use men from that same shadow world where he grew up, disaffected men who live in a world of violence, psychopaths who’ve been burned by society and have developed into predators who can kill without remorse.”

Ramos turned to me. “Tell me about these predatory lawsuits you said Ian Lassitor was involved in.”

“According to Nadia’s account,” I said, “Ian earned some or maybe even most of his money by suing companies for infringement of patents that he’d bought cheap from a company going through bankruptcy. He chose targets that were rich enough to pay a handsome settlement but poor enough not to be able to afford to fight a prolonged case. Nadia said he’d been called a patent troll.”

Diamond said, “A predator who Mikhailo might murder.”

Ramos nodded. He looked at me. “Have you found anything to suggest that Ian Lassitor’s drowning was murder?”

“Santiago said that there were marks on the boat wreckage that could have come from a boat collision, but there was no evidence beyond that. But it would have been easy for someone to run over his little woodie with a bigger boat.”

“And Amanda Horner?” Diamond said.

“If we assume that she was working for Mikhailo, maybe she learned about Lassitor’s death and was trying to squeeze Nadia Lassitor herself,” Ramos said. “If Mikhailo found out that she was running a blackmail scheme on the side, he would want to punish her and get her out of the way.”

I said, “Or she could have been exactly what she told me, a worker who botched the job of following Nadia. Her boss had warned her that the punishment for that was death.”

Ramos nodded. “The bottom line is that Mikhailo could be our murderer. If so, I can’t overestimate how dangerous he is. Coming from a professorial family, he is probably very bright. And of course, his fighting skills are significant.”

“Do you have any pictures of him?” I asked.

“No. For obvious reasons, photos are banned in the shadow MMA fighting circuit. He’s never gotten a license or any other ID under his given name. We also think that he’s changed his looks. One account said he was shaved bald. Another gave him a goatee and a ponytail. He’s never held a regular job under his given name. So he’s effectively stayed out of all the databases that we take for granted. The only photo that we could find was from his class picture in seventh grade.”

Ramos pulled two photos out of his manila folder and handed them to us. “Here are two copies of that photo. Extrapolating from a twelve-year-old boy to a man in his thirties is, of course, difficult, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“You said he had an older brother,” I said.

“Yes. Petro. A cardiac surgeon at Brooklyn Hospital. Several years ago, he fell off the Staten Island Ferry and drowned.”

“Did anyone see this accident?”

“No. It was late. He didn’t show up at home. The body was found the next day.”

Diamond asked, “Do we know if Petro and Mikhailo got along as children?”

“No. There’s no one to ask. The mother went missing some years ago. They didn’t have friends as I’ve already outlined. All of their relatives are back in Russia or Ukraine.” Ramos looked at the wall clock. “I’m sorry, but I’m out of time. Please keep me informed if you learn anything.”

TWENTY-ONE

Back at my cabin, I spent the next hour online trying to find information on the paint palette logo that Street found imprinted in the concrete of the tire anchor. I took a break to eat some lunch, and then went back to the computer. After another hour, I’d gotten nowhere.

I paced my little cabin, trying to see the logo in a new way. Spot watched me for awhile, no doubt wondering why I kept going to the deck door, then turning around without going outside. After several circuits, he gave up watching, put his head down and sighed.

Perhaps I was using the wrong words. So I looked for substitutions. The words tire, concrete, and anchor seemed required. But palette wasn’t. I wrote down substitutions. Painter, Paint, Mixing, Artist.

That was obvious. Only took me two hours to think of it.

A short time later I found a listing for a website called The Dock Design Artist.

I clicked through to the website. It took a bit for the banner at the top to load. It was a picture of a dock projecting out into a lake. Next to the picture was the palette and the line-drawing logo that was pressed into the concrete in the tire.