Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 5

  The three of us went out the back door and headed toward the far end of the dock.

  “You own all this, Thurman?” Tank asked, looking around.

  “Been in my family for over a century,” he replied. “Four generations of Thurmans have lived here. It’s my job to see that all this doesn’t slide off into the Atlantic.”

  “How much land?”

  “Forty acres total,” Rusty replied. “But most is mangrove marsh. Only about a fourth of the dry property is developed. I leave that jungle you drove through as a buffer against the traffic noise.”

  We reached the Dog and I went up the dock-mounted steps to the side deck. “Come aboard.”

  I unlocked the companionway hatch and slid it open, then reached inside and unlatched the small double doors.

  “This is more like it,” Tank said, stepping down into the cockpit. “Is this how we get out to your place?”

  “No,” I replied, starting down the steps. “It’d take the rest of the day to get there on Salty Dog. I have a small powerboat at the other end of the dock. Come on down.”

  The AC was on but set at 80°—low enough to keep the humidity down, but not cost a fortune for electricity. I lowered the thermostat and switched on the lights at the navigation station.

  “Sorry for all the delays, Tank,” I offered. “This just came up this morning and I need to check a few things before we head to the Contents.”

  “That’s what you call your island?”

  “No, the Contents were named that long before I arrived,” I said, opening the laptop and switching it on. “It’s a group of islands about an hour northwest of here. Mine doesn’t even have a name.”

  The computer booted up and connected to the Wi-Fi router, which in turn connected to a satellite way up in space. I opened my email server, then opened Chyrel’s email. There were two links, both to files on Deuce’s network. I clicked on the one labeled Kmart and sat down.

  “This is a clip from the security camera in Kmart’s parking lot,” I said. “Hopefully, it’s not long.”

  It wasn’t. Once it started playing, the timer showed it was less than four minutes of footage. Someone had clipped it from the original. A few seconds after the start, I saw a car headed south on US-1 that looked like the one in the picture Cobie was standing beside.

  I stopped the video and backed it up, then pulled the picture out of my pocket and leaned it against the side of the screen.

  Rusty and Tank leaned in closer, looking at the picture.

  “That’s Cobie Murphy,” I said, for Tank’s benefit. “Her car’s a blue Ford Fiesta.”

  “I just bought one,” Tank said, drawing curious looks from me and Rusty. “It was for my grand-niece’s graduation from high school.”

  I clicked the play button and the car again entered the picture, crossing from right to left, then disappearing at the nine-second mark.

  “It’s the same car,” Tank said. “A Ford Fiesta.”

  “Why didn’t she just turn in at Mickey D’s?” Rusty asked.

  “Good question,” I said. “She’s young. Maybe nervous about turning left across three lanes, and there’s a median in front of the entrance she used, so maybe she’s more comfortable going to the light at Sombrero. She should reappear down here at the bottom left of the screen.”

  A few seconds ticked off on the timer, as well as on the time and date stamp in the upper right corner of the security video.

  “Nope,” Rusty said, pointing. “She did a U-turn.”

  Sure enough, the same car reentered the screen from the upper left, slowed, then turned into the lot at its center. I was sure it was the car from Donna’s picture and the time stamp in the upper corner showed that it was 0923. The forensics guys would have watched hours of footage and that was the only car matching Cobie’s they’d seen, hence the four-minute clip.

  Donna had said Cobie was supposed to be at work at 0900 and had left at 0845. She was late for work and it had taken over half an hour to drive less than ten miles. With only two lights, that’d rarely take more than ten or fifteen minutes.

  The blue Fiesta immediately turned left upon entering the parking lot, following the row of spaces that faced US-1. Then it disappeared from the picture.

  “Can’t see much from that,” Rusty commented.

  “That’s what Donna said,” I replied. “Maybe Chyrel can—”

  “Wait!” Rusty said, leaning in closer as the clip ended. “Back it up to when her car disappears.”

  I did, and he pointed. “That black car that turned in right behind her and followed her? I swear that’s the same car that guy was driving this morning. The drug dealer we ran off!”

  I couldn’t see the car clearly, not enough to be sure of the make and model, but it did look like the Nissan sportscar.

  “Back it up to the beginning,” Tank said, his voice an octave lower.

  There was a rap on the hull and Sid called out, “Coming aboard.”

  A moment later, she stepped down into the upper salon, where she opened a cooler and passed a beer to each of us.

  “Red Stripe?” Tank asked, trying to twist the cap off.

  “Here,” Rusty said, pulling a bottle opener from his pocket, and uncapping the bottle for him.

  I started the video from the beginning. Three seconds after Cobie’s car entered the screen, Tank pointed. “There it is. The same black car that followed her in.”

  “You think that drug dealer kidnapped her?” Rusty asked.

  Sid looked at Rusty. “What drug dealer?”

  “Me and Jesse had to run some punk off this morning,” he replied.

  “Jesse and I,” she corrected him.

  “There’s no way to be sure it’s the same car,” I said, trying to make the connection in my mind and thinking out loud. “I half-expected to see a VW bus pull in behind her.”

  “What do you mean?” Sid asked.

  “Do either of you know Ty Sampson?” I asked.

  Sid shook her head.

  “Heard the name,” Rusty said. “Fiberglass guy. But I don’t know anything more about him than that.”

  “He made a custom wakeboard for Cobie,” I said. “Tank and I just talked to him and he was…evasive at best.”

  “Is that a new word for liar?” Tank asked.

  Rusty drained his beer and opened another. “What’d he say?”

  I told him and Sid about the series of events as Donna had related them, then what Sampson had told me and Tank. Then I told them the part about him not calling when Cobie didn’t show up to pick up the board that afternoon, and that he’d told us he’d sold her board.

  Rusty shook his head. “Sounds to me like he knew she’d never be picking it up.”

  “What’s the other link in the email?” Tank asked.

  I reduced the video clip and clicked on the second link Chyrel had sent me. It opened a file folder, which held more folders. I clicked on one labeled “Crime Scene Photos,” and it revealed forty-eight photographs. I started with the first one and progressed through each, just getting a feel for what the photographer was looking at.

  “I’m sure glad your girl is on our side,” Tank said. “Isn’t it illegal for you to even have this stuff?”

  “It’s a thin line between legal and illegal,” Rusty said. “Sometimes ya gotta step over it. Like, it’s against the law to jaywalk, but if you see a kid in the middle of a busy street, you’ll run out there and get them.”

  “If I find anything the police overlooked,” I explained, starting back at the beginning of the photos, “I’ll get hold of the lead detective and steer him in a conversation so he can discover it himself.”

  I stopped on an image of the driver’s side of Cobie’s car. Something about it had seemed off on the first pass. I suddenly realized what it was.

  “Take a look at this,” I said, picking up the photo and holding it beside the image on the screen. In the snapshot, Cobie was standing beside the car and the door was closed. In the
crime scene shot, the door was open.

  “The seat’s been moved,” Tank said. “She’s a short round—barely taller than a car I leaned my arm on. Look at the picture. You can see the headrest is forward of the door pillar.” He pointed at the screen. “In that one, the seat’s pushed all the way back.”

  I stood and paced the upper salon, thinking.

  “Cobie’s five-two,” I said, turning to Tank. “How tall would you guess Sampson to be?”

  “A bit shorter’n me,” he replied. “Five-nine or -ten, maybe.”

  “Do you think one of the officers might have moved the seat?” Sid asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not a cop or forensics tech, but I think if I were going to take pictures of a crime scene, it would be to preserve information before the forensics team started tearing it apart for clues.”

  “That would be logical,” Tank said. “Do you have any former law enforcement officers on your payroll?”

  “No LEOs on the payroll,” I said, pulling my phone out. “But I have one in the family. Two, actually.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Kim said, answering her phone. I could hear an outboard burbling in the background.

  “Hey, kiddo. I have a question for you. Are you busy?”

  “Just patrolling with Marty. What’s up?”

  “Tough job,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

  “This is a cop question,” I began. “If a car is found abandoned and foul play is believed to be involved, would pictures be taken before anything was disturbed?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Preliminary photos of a crime scene keeps everything as it was for further study. Then more pictures as the forensics guys process evidence, and finally, photos of any items removed, each in a sealed evidence bag. What’s going on?”

  How to word it so I wasn’t lying?

  “I’m looking into the disappearance of that girl just before Thanksgiving. Cobie Murphy is her name. Anyway, I came across a picture showing that the driver’s seat of her car had been moved.”

  “You came across a picture?”

  “It’s a crime scene photo I saw. I was just wondering if I should bring it to the attention of the police.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said slowly, doubt dripping from her words. “To answer your question, no, the seat wouldn’t be moved until forensics is finished. The crime scene photographer is normally on the forensics team. As to the unasked question—yes, you should let the police know.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks, that’s a lot of help.”

  “Dad, you’re not with the government anymore. Cops, even private detectives, have to play by the rules.”

  “I’m just poking around,” I said. “Gotta go. Bye.”

  I ended the call before she could ask anything else. She and Eve have both been bugging me to retire and just fish.

  Sitting at the desk again, I clicked on the file labeled “Crime Scene Notes.” There weren’t a lot of them. I saw nothing about the driver’s seat being pushed back.

  Another file was labeled “Phone Records,” and I opened it. She texted a whole lot more than she called. Scrolling to the morning of her disappearance, I looked for a phone call to a local landline.

  “What are you looking for?” Tank asked.

  I turned to Rusty, the all-knowing keeper of Middle Keys knowledge and scuttlebutt. “Donna said Cobie was a good kid—a great kid. She worked hard, was athletic, didn’t do drugs or drink. Does that jibe with what you know of her?”

  “The same,” he replied. “Smart as a whip, as fast as the wind, and she has a good heart. Remember? She volunteered to help serve food after Irma.”

  “If Cobie had to be at work at zero-nine-hundred and knew she was going to be late, what would she do?”

  His eyes cut to the screen and the two images frozen there; her phone records for the morning of Friday, November 20th and the time-stamped video showing she was twenty-three minutes late for work.

  “If she was going to be a minute late,” Rusty said, “I’d put my bottom dollar on her calling her boss.”

  We spent another ten minutes looking over the rest of the information in the folder, but nothing else jumped out at me. There just wasn’t a lot there, and nothing more had been added since December 8th, over two weeks ago.

  Finally, I closed the laptop. Then I drained my beer and turned to Tank. “We can head up to the island now.”

  “You sure?” he asked. “This is getting interesting.”

  “Nothing more I can do,” I said. “I need to contact the lead detective on the case and see if I can’t get him to stumble on these clues without telling him I saw his files.”

  “Does it matter that much if he knows? You’re running out in the street to save a kid, right?”

  “The rules of engagement are different off the battlefield,” I said. “If and when it goes to trial, the evidence would be tainted if the defense learned it came from a computer hacker.”

  He stared at me a moment—that hard, blank stare I remembered from my youth, inscrutable and wise at the same time. But there was something else there. Was it fear?

  “Improvise, adapt, and overcome,” Tank said. “You’ve made the transition well, Gunny. Yeah, a little fresh air always gets my brain ticking again.”

  “Who’s the lead?” Rusty asked, as Sid led the way up the companionway ladder.

  “Clark Andersen,” I replied. “You know him?”

  “Yeah. Good fisherman. His parents used to run a bait shop down on Summerland. Or was it Ramrod? Anyway, he’s always been a straight shooter, that I know.”

  I locked up the Dog and we said our goodbyes to Rusty and Sid.

  “Let’s get your stuff from the truck,” I said, as we walked toward the turning basin and dinghy dock. “My boat’s down here.”

  Once we had Tank’s gear aboard, I started the Suzuki outboard and untied the lines. A few minutes later, we were out of the canal and I told Tank to hang on.

  I pushed the throttle nearly to the wide-open position and the nimble little boat sprang up onto the step and accelerated. I pulled back to about halfway—enough to maintain twenty knots and not have to shout over the engine, then trimmed the boat for the rough chop.

  We skirted East Sister Rock, putting the waves to our stern, and throttled up a little more.

  Tank stared at the house on East Sister. “That what your place looks like?”

  “Not hardly,” I said, turning toward the Seven Mile Bridge. “Mine’s just a pile of timber and steel that I built myself.”

  “That’s good.” He leaned back against the post. “That place is a little ostentatious.”

  “Ostentatious?”

  “Means a vulgar display, designed to impress. I’m not impressed.”

  I grinned over at him as we passed under the bridge. “I know what it means. I just didn’t know that you did.”

  He looked over at me and nodded. “A man can learn new things, son. I been doing a lot of reading.”

  The little Grady didn’t need to follow channels. At least not the deep ones. On plane, she’d skim across anything deeper than two feet. I knew where those shallow banks were located, even without having to resort to the little chart plotter mounted to the console. I’d made this run thousands of times.

  The ride took less than an hour, as I pointed out the different landmarks along the way. Finally, I weaved through several cuts, entered the deep water of Harbor Channel, and turned west toward my island.

  “How far is this from the nearest road?” Tank asked, as I pulled the throttles back and turned into the channel I’d dug to my house.

  “Over four miles,” I replied. “Straight behind us on Big Pine Key.”

  “No neighbors for four miles?” he said, moving to the bow and freeing a coiled line from the rail, which was tied to a bow cleat.

  “Actually, my nearest neighbor is just over a mile away,” I said, pointing up the channel to Mac Travis’s island
. “On that island.”

  I reversed and turned the wheel toward the dock, then killed the engine. Tank stepped over with the bow line and I grabbed the stern line and did likewise.

  He looked around. “Still, from a strategic standpoint, this is excellent.”

  A clicking of claws announced the arrival of Finn and Woden. The dogs stopped a few feet away and sat. There was a stranger with me, and they were on alert until I told them it was okay. Normally, they’d be frantically dancing on my toes.

  “Tank, meet Finn and Woden,” I said, as he looked at the two large canines.

  “Finn’s the Lab, right?”

  “Good guess,” Savannah said from the top of the steps.

  Tank looked up and smiled as she started down. “Not really a guess, ma’am. Woden was the chief god of ancient Germanic tribes. Labs are water dogs from Canada. Both are named appropriately.”

  “Learned that from your recent reading?” I asked.

  “I’m not a big fan of generic pet names, like Fido or Spot.”

  “You must be Tank,” she said, reaching the bottom of the steps and striding toward us. “Please, just call me Savannah.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” he offered. “Jesse’s told me all about you.”

  Savannah’s eyes cut to me. “He has, huh?”

  “In man talk,” Tank said. “He told me he was getting married and I asked him if his rum locker was full.”

  She laughed as they shook hands, then we grabbed Tank’s gear from the boat and headed up the steps.

  “I thought you said you’ve lived here for fifteen years,” he said when we reached the deck and he’d had a chance to see the whole island for the first time. “Everything looks brand new. How many people live here?”

  “Most of it is new,” Savannah said.

  “Hurricane Irma passed right over here three years ago,” I added. “It destroyed just about everything.”

  I pointed to the nearest building. “My first mate, a Navy guy named Jimmy Saunders, lives over there. At least he does when he’s not at his girlfriend’s. Besides being my crew on charters, he takes care of things here on the island.”

  Pointing north, I added, “My middle daughter and her husband live there, but they work up on the mainland, so they have a place up there, too. Our youngest is staying there for now. That last place is the bunkhouse. You have your pick of twelve racks.”