Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow (12 page)

She felt herself explode within, and the feeling was growing again. He was over her, his eyes touching hers, and he moved into her, thrusting in a way that seemed to fill her completely and then stroked, moving with greater power and speed, reaching higher and higher, slowly, beginning again, leading her once again to a point where she exploded cataclysmically, shuddering and shaking in his arms, so sated that she felt she could die. She seemed to fall down in a field of clouds, except the clouds were sweaty and sleek, and it was amazing to be held against him with such a contrast of sensations filling her flesh and mind.

Sex. Just sex. First sex. Awkward when the clothing was strewn and the pinnacle reached…

But it wasn’t. He came up on an elbow, and his smile was deep. His features were really masculine and beautiful, rugged, never pretty, and yet…beautiful.

“Umm. You were well worth waiting for,” she whispered.

“We didn’t wait that long,” he said, smiling at her.

“Seems like forever,” she said softly.

“Thank you. And…obviously, the point now is not to instantly jump your bones, so I suppose it will be all right if I tell you you are really amazingly beautiful and certainly, anyone could wait a lifetime for you.”

She laughed. It was easy being with him. Naked and panting, it was still easy. “Did you get to Ireland in your travels?” She teased. “Kiss the Blarney stone?”

He stroked her hair, looked into her eyes. “Never,” he assured her. He held her against him, still studying her face. “Sean’s little sister. You did grow up well.”

“You’ve really got to quit referring to me as Sean’s little sister.”

“I do, absolutely. I don’t intend to feel guilty a moment when I see Sean. You are, beyond a doubt, very grownup. And out. In all the right places.”

“Thank you, again.” She laughed, and then her breath caught, and suddenly they were clinging to one another again, and rolling on the bed, passionately touching and teasing, and once again, making love wildly, desperately reaching at moments, smiling at others, laughing…and then climaxing again. The world seemed to have no end. They talked about music and coming home from school and finding a way to make it all work. He talked about lighting and photography, getting into underwater film, loving the world beneath the sea, and she reminded him that Key West had some of the most fantastic sunsets in the world.

When she slept that night, it was deeply.

When she woke, the woman was back.

Not Tanya, the other woman. The dark-haired woman. She was seated across the room in the dressing-room chair, and she was looking at Katie forlornly.

Katie bit her lip and turned her head slightly, glad to see that she and David were both decently covered beneath the coolness of the air-conditioning.

She stared at the girl in her room, and she moved her lips without a whisper. “Not here! Never in my room.”

The ghost frowned, blinked and then nodded. She stood, and glided sadly toward the door, and disappeared through it.

Katie woke up early. Lazy, smiling, she’d turned to David, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he was there with her. They made love again, slowly, leisurely, feeling the heat of the day grow and glow upon them as the sun rose.

When she drifted off again, David left her a note, telling her that he’d be at his grandfather’s house.

He still couldn’t call the place his own.

He wanted to spend more of his time with the files Liam had left for him. The police reports were filled with sheets on the detectives’ door-to-door questioning of neighbors. No one had seen anyone enter the museum other than the Becketts and tourists.

Many neighbors saw him.

There were the statements, sworn by his grandfather and others, that he had worked at the museum until midnight, and then been at home and with his family until the next morning, when he had left to go to the museum once again.

Danny Zigler had been questioned; he was one of the few people with a key to the museum. But a set of keys had hung just inside the kitchen door of the Beckett house, and many people knew that they were there. It had been determined that there hadn’t been a break-in, so someone had come in with a key. There hadn’t been an alarm system, despite the expense that had been poured into the place over the years.

Forensics had yielded little other than the fact that Tanya had been strangled; an injury to her knee was at least a week old. She had apparently skinned it. The autopsy report noted that Tanya Barnard had not been tortured-a small blessing.

David dragged his fingers through his hair, and began drawing a chart of the timeline. First, time of death. Second, time in which to get into the museum. It had been open until midnight the night before. That meant her body had been elsewhere for several hours, then moved into the museum. Whoever had put her in the museum either had a key, or knew where the keys were kept. Many people knew about the key. But the Becketts had all been home and together after midnight on the night of the murder. Which meant, David thought, that it had been planned. Meticulously planned. Days before, someone had to have taken the key and had it reproduced. He had a key, there was a key they kept in the house, Danny Zigler had a key and Liam had a key.

David drummed his fingers on the table.

It hadn’t been a random killing. Tanya had been targeted, and the display of her body had been planned ahead of time. Likely, it was someone who had come and gone from the Beckett house. Himself, Liam. Danny Zigler, any member of Tanya’s family, his friends at the time, his grandfather’s friends…

He was going over the names, trying to think of anyone else. Craig Beckett had been smart, but he’d also had an open heart. They’d welcomed underprivileged kids in for tea, supported the police, the firefighters and every poor wretch who stumbled upon their family. The house had been an open highway.

Sam Barnard thought that Danny was shady. David had a hard time accepting the fact that he might be guilty of murder.

Who then? Who had been around? Himself, Liam, Sam, Jamie O’Hara…no, they said that he hadn’t left his bar that night, not until the wee hours of the morning. Still, he could have hidden the body-but he hadn’t been gone between the hours of seven and nine.

She had last been seen at O’Hara’s.

There had to be something in the files.

There were pictures. Bizarre pictures, still barely real. He rubbed his finger over one of the photographs, touching Tanya’s cheek. Had she been targeted and killed because someone wanted to punish her?

For being free and loose, for finding a new lover while she’d still been engaged?

He read more of the interview notes and realized that there was a small notation next to the name Mike Sanderson. Itvw b p; subject oos. What the hell did that mean?

He frowned. They were a policeman’s notes to himself. Guy Levy. He was still a cop; he’d gotten transferred over to investigation from being a beat cop. Guy had at least ten years with the force now.

Interview by phone; subject out of state?

David pulled out his cell phone and called the station, asking for Guy. To his surprise, he reached him immediately.

“David! Saw you at the station the other day but you were gone before I could say hello. How are you doing? Dumb question. We hear about-and see-your success all the time. It’s good that you’re back.”

“Thanks. Hey, Guy, I wanted to ask you a question about Tanya’s case.”

There was silence, and then a groan. “Hey, you know, I wasn’t really in on the case. I wasn’t an official investigator. I was just doing interviews.”

“I know, I was just curious. Did you go up and see Mike Sanderson, Tanya’s new boyfriend?”

“No, no. I interviewed him by phone. He was gone, you know.”

“Right. So I heard. Where was he when you spoke to him?”

“Uh-home?”

“You sure?”

“Well, he’d left Key West, you know. Like a day or two before the murder. I didn’t talk to him until the following Monday. I’m sure he could have reached Ohio by then.”

“Did you speak to him on a landline?”

“I spoke to him on the only number I had. He was all broken up. Said he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hear from her right away-he’d been afraid that once she’d seen you, she’d change her mind.”

Sloppy work, David thought. Well, they’d dragged in patrolmen. Men who did what they were told, and didn’t think to hunt down the man and talk to him in person.

He didn’t tell Guy that someone should have really traced Mike Sanderson’s movements; he could have been hiding out somewhere in the Keys. He could have surprised Tanya. She wouldn’t have fought him. She would have never suspected that he wanted to do her harm.

He thanked Guy and clicked the end button on his phone. He needed to get Liam going through official channels to draw credit-card receipts and find out if Mike Sanderson had really left the island.

The crime-scene photos were not good. The murder had been just ten years ago; the photos should have been better, more extensive. He turned on a high-powered light and ruffled through the desk for a magnifying glass.

There was something he hadn’t noticed before. Spots. He tried to rub them off the photos. They didn’t rub off. Was it poor photography? No, he thought. There was something there. Something that looked like light blue bruising on her nose and her lips.

He pulled out the autopsy photos and report. There was no mention of the bruising on the face.

Maybe it had been so light at the time that the coroner hadn’t seen it?

Impossible to tell at this late date, and it wasn’t evident until now, until he took out the magnifying glass.

Death was officially suffocation by strangling. The bruises on the neck were evident. There had been nothing beneath her nails. Tanya hadn’t fought her attacker. She had been taken completely by surprise.

That suggested someone strong, and, probably, an assault from behind.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine someone coming up behind her, someone with the strength to encircle her neck with his hands and choke the life out of her before she could put her hands up to resist. It would have been natural for her hands to dig into the hands that were on her, for her nails to have curled into flesh.

Not if her attacker was wearing gloves, and not if he stole her air so quickly she couldn’t scream or do more than lift her hands.

His phone started ringing and vibrating on the desk. He picked it up and checked his caller ID before answering it.

Pete. Lieutenant Pete Dryer.

“I thought I’d call you right away,” Pete said.

“What’s happened?” Was he calling because Guy had told him about his questioning?

“Oh, God,” Pete said.

David felt a quickening of dread; he’d made sure that the museum was locked, but he still had a sinking feeling.

“What’s happened?”

“I’m down off Front Street at the new oddities museum,” Pete said.

Thank God, a different museum, thank God…

But he knew, he knew something terrible had happened, and he had a feeling that it didn’t matter much where the body had been discovered, just that one had been.

“I found my missing stripper,” Pete said. “And God knows, maybe something is going on again, maybe your mumbo jumbo about an agenda is right. So I’m trying to unofficially let you in on this. Come on down, and I’ll do what I can.”

David was frankly surprised that he was permitted to pass by the yellow tape with Liam.

There was already a good crowd on the sidewalk as they made their way through the outer doors to the tourist attractions. People were whispering, pointing, speculating.

The museum was a medium-size place, much as the Beckett family had operated, but it was new since he’d been gone. One-storied, it occupied an old warehouse building that was just about ten thousand feet square. It was called the Eccentricities Museum, a good enough name for the exhibits it boasted on the posters flanking the doorway.

See Carl Tanzler and his Elena! Get to know Robert the Doll! Become a member of the Conch Republic-yes, it was real, for just a few hours. Find out about the secession! Meet Samuel Mudd, take a virtual tour out to the Dry Tortugas and learn what it was like when yellow fever struck.

Just as in most other museums, other exhibits came first.

There was a young woman talking to an officer at the entry, sobbing as she did so. She had been the cashier, he realized. There weren’t tours here-visitors walked through at their own pace, he saw.

Liam was moving quickly, and David followed at the same speed. He almost bumped into a model of Hemingway-in death, the man was everywhere.

Pete was already at the crime scene. He was hunkered down by the body, speaking with the M.E., who had already been working on the corpse.

The exhibit displayed Elena in wedding gown, with Carl Tanzler standing by her side. A plaque announced that they were Tanzler and his bride-he had married her in a private ceremony officiated by himself, in his airplane on the beach. One day, he had believed, he and his bride would sail away to the heavens in his airplane.

David’s muscles seemed to knot and contort; no model of Elena lay on the bed.

This time, the girl had dark hair. Long, dark, slightly kinky hair.

There was a photographer on hand, but Pete seemed to be impatient with him. “Angles-I need the angles. Come on, you should have a couple dozen shots by now.”

David shot wildlife. Nature. He wasn’t experienced with crime-scene photography. Luckily, there had been a few classes at college on the techniques. But they weren’t much to help him as he tried to use his small digital camera discreetly to get a few snaps.

The woman’s eyes were open wide. She stared in distorted horror into the air.

Déjà vu.

Pete, the M.E. and the police photographer-who mumbled something about the real guy being on vacation-stepped back.

Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. The bruises on her neck. Flash, flash, flash…the way her body was situated on the bed. Flash, flash, flash, her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, just like Tanya’s.

“This one has been dead for twenty-four hours,” the M.E. told Pete, pointing his gloved hands at the body. “She was held somewhere else while lividity set in…note the blood and the coloration on her arms.”

“The museum had just opened. Liam, you might go and interview the first group through here today, the ones who found her.” He gave directions to other officers and techs, staring at the body and shaking his head. “Hell. I wanted to throw her in jail for a night or two, but this…”

“She was strangled?” David asked the M.E. It seemed obvious, but nothing could be taken for granted.

The man looked up at him curiously. “Same as before.”

Flash, flash, flash. A sheet had been pulled up, but it seemed to have been done hastily. She wasn’t pretty, as Pete had said. In life, she’d had a hard look about her, David thought. There was none of the innocence and youth that had made Tanya so stunning, even as a corpse in a tableau. The woman wasn’t unattractive; she just wasn’t beautiful. Nor had she been laid out with care. There was something off about the scene, something discordant with the last.

And the last he could remember as if it had been yesterday.

Pete looked over at him. “This one isn’t as pretty, maybe it’s a copycat. Or maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe, just maybe, you’re right. Someone has an agenda. And…”

Pete’s voice failed. David knew what he meant to say.

And look who is back on the island after ten years?

It was Pete. Because of Pete, he could be here, he was sure Pete’s superiors would see that he was ejected from the scene soon.

David stared at the dead girl, trying to take in every detail that he could. Bruises rounded her throat. The petechia in her eyes was pronounced. She wore lipstick, but it was smudged. Her blouse had been buttoned out of whack.

Had she done it herself?

There was the sheet that had been tossed over her-it almost looked as if the murderer had been forced to hurry. Where Tanya had been laid out to appear perfectly beautiful, it seemed that this girl had been quickly dumped.

“Lieutenant!”

One of Dryer’s top men came in and whispered to him. Pete glanced at David, sighed and nodded. He came to David and whispered, “Well, my men are beginning to comment on the fact that I’ve got a civilian in here. This is it-time for you to go.”

David lifted a hand. “Thanks for calling me, Pete,” he said.

Pete inhaled. “You were so adamant about not reopening the Beckett museum. But…hell, where there’s a psycho… I’m afraid that it’s not just you, David, who needs to worry about their displays. Now we know that. Any museum is up for grabs, so it seems. And Fantasy Fest is nearly here. Good God. We’ve got a murderer, and the streets are about to become wall-to-wall people. Heaven help us.”

“People may start canceling.”

“Hell, no. Okay, maybe. Some will. But a little thing like the murder of a prostitute isn’t going to stop anyone from partying. Lord, I hope the crime-scene folk can get something!” Pete said with disgust. “Why can’t we have a few more normal bar fights?”