Last Words (19 page)

19

The mist rising from the marsh had settled a few feet above ground, but Hal knew as he walked along the edge of the field that by the time he reached the marina, it would be gone, burned off by the hot July sun. Which was fine with him. Hal had no problem with the heat.

For a man in his sixties, he was in fine shape, healthy and strong and no infirmities to speak of beyond the usual. A little arthritis here and a little there. Thinning hair. But for a man his age, he was in remarkable shape.

Still strong as a bull,
he liked to say.

He’d retired reluctantly, but knew it was for the best. It was time to pass the office on to someone younger, someone better trained in all the latest law enforcement techniques, someone up on all the newest technology. Someone who could keep the police department in step with all the other changes that were taking place in St. Dennis.

Someone like Gabriel Beck.

Hal whistled as he walked down the stone steps toward the slip where the
Shady Lady
was tied. Beck had done just fine. And he, Hal, couldn’t congratulate himself enough on having had the foresight to track Beck down and talk him into coming back to St. Dennis and taking the job.

A gull swooped over his head and dove toward the water where some chum had been tossed overboard by a fisherman already on his way back into the marina.

“Calling it a day, John?” Hal called to the skipper who was backing his cruiser into its slip.

“Out since four and not a nibble. God’s way of telling me to get back to work.” The man waved as Hal passed by.

Hal chuckled and continued on down the wooden walk to where his boat was tied. He didn’t really care if the fish were biting or not.
Fishing
was just euphemism for
lazing on the bay
on a day off, as far as he was concerned.

The new blue tarp covered the deck and the ropes were taut against the tide. Hal climbed aboard his craft and began to unfastened the tarp. He’d bought it just days earlier at Singer’s and had spent an hour before last night’s meeting fitting it. He’d been pleased to find it fit like a glove, just as Todd had promised.

That boy did know boats.

Hal had removed half of the tarp before he saw the thing on the deck. It took him several long minutes to react.

“Holy Mother of God.” He backed away in horror. “Holy Mother of God…”

The body wrapped mummy-style in plastic was in even worse shape than Holly Sheridan’s had been, but the killer had added a little something extra to make identification easier. He’d placed the victim’s driver’s license inside a plastic sandwich bag along with the tape.

“Considerate bastard.” Beck leaned over the body and studied the photo ID through the layers of plastic wrap. “You think there’s any reason to doubt this is in fact Mindy Kenneher?”

“I think I’d want something conclusive before I turned her over to the family, but the hair’s the right color,” Mia pointed out. “And why would he have Mindy’s driver’s license if he hadn’t had Mindy?”

“Good point.” Beck took his phone from his pocket. “Might as well give Rich Meyer a call, get him over here right away.”

“We need some good crime scene techs, and we need them soon,” Mia noted.

“I’d just as soon put Lisa on it. The fewer hands on this deck, the better,” Beck said as he dialed. “Besides, Lisa’s had a lot of training in lifting prints and she’s damned good at collecting trace. We’re going to be sending anything we find to your lab anyway. The only other option is to call in the state, and I’d rather leave them out of it. If I let Lisa process the scene, there’s no one on board except you, me, Lisa and the ME. That okay with you?”

“It’s fine with me. By the way, I told Lisa she’d make a great federal agent,” Mia told him.

“Don’t get any ideas, she’s worth two of anyone else I have. Council’s already approved her promotion to detective, thank you very much. We just haven’t told her yet. Maybe not as glamorous as being a fed, but she likes her home life.”

Beck stopped pacing when his call was answered. “Yes, this is Gabriel Beck in St. Dennis. I need to speak with Chief Meyer immediately…”

Beck finished his call, then immediately placed another one to his dispatcher.

“Garland, I need Lisa down here right away. Did you call her like I asked you to?” Beck began to pace again. “Well, try her again. Page her. Call her house. Maybe she stopped home for something and hasn’t checked her messages yet…”

“Is everything all right, Beck?” Mia asked. “You look annoyed.”

“I need Lisa and she hasn’t called in.”

“When I spoke with her early this morning, she said she was going out to that shopping center outside of town, the one that has the gym and the coffee shop. She was going to show around the photos of the three victims, see if anyone recognized one or all of them.”

“Yes, I know where she went and why. She should still be answering her page. Garland said he’s paged her twice without a response.”

He glanced behind him at the showroom beyond the dock. “Duncan, call up there to Singer’s and ask Todd if he’s spoken with Lisa in the past hour or so. I need her now.”

“Right, Chief.” Duncan nodded and trotted off up the steps.

A crowd began to gather, and Beck spent the next fifteen minutes asking them all to leave. Garland reported back to Beck that Todd Singer was out, showing a boat to a client, but was expected back any time, and that Lisa had not been in the showroom since it opened at nine.

An annoyed Beck sent Duncan back to the station for an evidence kit, then walked over to Mia and said, “Duncan should be back in a few minutes. We can get started then.”

“I’ll be here.” Mia nodded and wished she was wearing something other than the new short, slim skirt and shirt she’d picked up at Bling the night before. Not exactly what to wear when crawling around a boat looking for evidence.

She opened her bag and searched her wallet for receipt for her purchases, and hoped the shop’s phone number was printed on it. It was, and she dialed the number on her cell phone.

“Vanessa, it’s Mia…yes, thank you, it was fun. I would definitely love to come back. Listen, I…yes, I love the outfit, as a matter of fact, that’s why I’m calling.” Mia explained what had happened, where she was, and what she was going to have to do.

“So I was wondering, if those cute jeans that I was looking at are still there, if I could run down and pick them up, they’re more suitable to what I have to do this morning than what I have on. No, no, I wouldn’t ask you to do that…”

Mia paused, considering Vanessa’s offer to run the clothes over for her.

“On second thought, I would appreciate it enormously, if it isn’t going to put you out too much. It would save time. Thanks, Vanessa. No, I have no preference. Any shirt is fine, the simpler the better. Just a basic T-shirt would be best.”

Mia thanked her again, and dropped the phone back into her skirt pocket.

“Odd time to be clothes shopping,” Beck said.

“I really wasn’t prepared for this. We can’t get onto the boat until we have the equipment, so in the interim, I thought I’d change. Vanessa has offered to run over with a few things I tried on last night but didn’t buy because I didn’t expect to need them. It won’t hold us up. I’d just be more comfortable climbing around on the deck of that boat in something other than a skirt.”

He glanced at her abreviated hemline. “Good call. I’ll meet you on deck when the ME gets here.”

Beck set off after Hal, who was carrying two orange cones across the parking lot to block off the entrance in an effort to keep out the gathering crowd of spectators.

Mia paced along the dock, watching for Vanessa.

“Well, wasn’t someone saying last night that this guy was going to make a bold move soon? I’d say this qualifies.” Susan joined Mia on the dock.

They both turned to watch the Cameron cruiser pull into the lot. Chief Meyer got out of the car, and caught up with Beck. They spoke briefly, then walked toward the boat.

“It was a surprise.” Mia nodded, as the two men passed her silently. “But this isn’t quite what I was expecting.”

“Are you kidding? This is about as ballsy as they come,” Susan insisted. “Ballsy as leaving the other body in Beck’s car. And just as much of a jab at Beck, if you ask me.”

“Because Hal is the former chief of police?”

“That, sure.” Sue nodded. “And because Hal is Beck’s father.”

20

Mia stared in silence at Sue.

“Ah, I take it you didn’t know that?” Sue asked.

“That Hal Garrity is Beck’s father?” Mia shook her head. “No. I had no idea.”

“I forgot that you’re not from here. It certainly isn’t a secret.”

Mia looked over her shoulder to the end of the parking lot, where Hal was blocking off the drive, then glanced back at Beck, who stood on the deck of the
Shady Lady
. The two men stood in exactly the same position, right hand on right hip, and though impossible to see their faces, even from a distance, the similarities in their body builds were unmistakable. Mia wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before.

Several people were gathered on the opposite side of the building that housed Todd Singer’s showroom. On his way back from the station, Duncan stopped to turn away the curious, except for Vanessa Keaton. Apparently crime scene tape wasn’t intended to keep out members of the chief’s family.

Or maybe it was just that Duncan had a thing for Vanessa, Mia thought as she watched the officer’s eyes follow the pretty young woman along the boardwalk.

“Mia, here are your things,” Vanessa called to her. “God, does this thing just keep getting crazier and crazier or what?”

“It’s pretty crazy, all right.” Mia met her halfway.

“How is Hal? Is he okay?”

“I think he was a little shaken up. As anyone would be.”

“Is it that woman from Cameron?” Vanessa handed Mia the bag she’d brought from Bling.

“It could be her,” Mia nodded, not wanting to discuss what they’d found on the body until they were certain. “We’re not positive. Chief Meyer is on the boat now with Beck.”

The sound of tires crunching on stone drew their attention.

“I see Dr. Reilly is here already.” Vanessa nodded in the direction of the van that had just arrived. “I’ll bet she never expected anything like this when she moved to St. Dennis from Baltimore.”

“She’s been kept busy, that’s for sure.” Mia looked around. “Where’s a phone booth when you need one?”

“What?” Vanessa frowned, then laughed. “You mean to change?” She pointed up the rise to Singer’s. “Todd has a ladies’ room. I’m sure he won’t mind if you use it to make a quick change. Come on, I’ll walk up with you.”

“Thanks again.” Mia looked back at the boat, where Beck was still talking to Rich Meyer. If she hurried, she could change and get back to the dock before he even realized she was gone.

She fell in step with Vanessa.

“If that is the woman from Cameron, why do you think he left her in St. Dennis?” Vanessa asked as they walked toward the boat showroom.

“I’m thinking he’s taking another shot at Beck,” Mia said. “Leaving the body on your dad’s boat was just another way of making it personal.”

“My…?” Vanessa smiled. “Oh, Hal’s not my dad, he’s Beck’s. We had the same mother, different fathers.”

“I am so sorry.” Mia flushed with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“Hey, you’re not the first person who wasn’t aware we’re half-siblings. It’s okay. We’ve never referred to each other in terms of fractions.”

“I apologize, all the same. Someone just mentioned that Hal was Beck’s father…”

“I would love to have had him for a dad. I never really knew my own father. He and my mother split up before I was born.”

Vanessa stopped in mid-stride.

“They do walk alike, don’t they?” Vanessa nodded toward the parking lot. Hal was taking more orange cones from the back of a pick-up truck that had just pulled up and setting them around the end of the lot.

“They do. I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out.” Mia told her. “I’m usually pretty observant.”

“How would you know? Beck doesn’t call Hal, ‘Dad’ and they have different last names.” Vanessa smiled. “The funny thing is, they are so much alike in so many ways, and yet they didn’t even know about each other until Beck was…”

Vanessa slowed her pace. “If you didn’t know about their relationship, you probably haven’t heard the story.”

Mia shook her head, no.

“You could be the only person in St. Dennis who hasn’t. Hal was living here when it happened. He’d grown up here, came back after college and stayed. Maggie—she’s our mother—met Hal in Indiana, when he was playing minor league baseball. She was eighteen and he was in his early twenties, I think. Anyway, she met him when he came into her parent’s restaurant. She was engaged to someone else, but apparently that didn’t stop her and Hal from falling in love. Then the unthinkable happened.”

“She got pregnant.”

“Yeah, well, that, too. But before she even knew about that, Hal was drafted into the army and ended up in Vietnam. He didn’t know about Beck, and because her parents were having a hissy, they forced Maggie to marry the guy she was engaged to.”

“Did he know…?”

“About Beck? Yes. Said he didn’t care, he loved Maggie, wanted to marry her anyway, he’d treat Beck as if he were his own, yada yada.”

“I take it he didn’t?”

“He tried. But frankly, I think Maggie must have been miserable. Her brother—my Uncle Jack—told me that her husband really loved her but couldn’t make her happy. I guess she just couldn’t love him. They didn’t stay married long, less than a year. She took Beck and moved to Chicago and stayed with a cousin for a while, I don’t really know the whole story. Maggie doesn’t talk about that time in her life very often. She remarried—my father—when Beck was about twelve or thirteen. About a year later, she found out she was pregnant with me, but by that time, she’d left that husband, too. Beck was supposedly a real wild child, so she tracked Hal down and drove Beck to St. Dennis. The way I heard it, she walked right up to Hal’s door one night and rang the bell, and when Hal answered it, she said something like, ‘I can’t do a damned thing with him, so you’re going to have to take it from here.’”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Handed over Beck’s birth certificate and just walked away.”

“Wow. That’s hard to believe.”

“Not if you knew Maggie.” Vanessa watched Beck approach them, and she lowered her voice. “Frankly, I always thought he was the lucky one…”

Mia looked at her, a puzzled look on her face.

“She kept me.” Vanessa walked up the steps and opened the door to the showroom, leaving a stunned Mia to follow.

“I guess I should have expected it, but I really didn’t think he’d make his move so quickly.” Beck stood over the body, Viv Reilly on one side, Mia on the other. Rich Meyer stood on the dock, watching. He was fairly sure the body was that of his neighbor’s child, and did not want to be on the boat while evidence was being collected.

“Well, you said bold, he wanted to show you bold,” the ME said.

“That was my initial reaction, too. But I’m not so sure…” Mia told them.

“Not sure about what?” Beck asked.

“Not sure this is it. The big move. I’m wondering if this isn’t more like wagging a finger in your face. I expected something…I don’t know, more dramatic.” Mia frowned.

“I think for Hal, finding a dead naked woman wrapped up like a sandwich on the deck of his boat was pretty dramatic,” Beck said.

“I’m sure it was. This just feels like, I don’t know, staging, maybe. I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am.” She slipped on the plastic gloves and said, “Where would you like to start?”

“Is it beneath an FBI agent to dust for prints?” he asked. “Do you have a problem playing CSI?”

Mia made a face and grabbed the kit from his hands. “Are you kidding? I can dust with the best of them.”

Beck vacuumed the deck but wasn’t willing to bet that anything of any use would turn up in the bag. Though he was hoping for some fibers or hair, he wasn’t optimistic. Just as he wasn’t hopeful Mia would find any prints that would lead them anywhere. He was certain the killer spent as little time on the
Shady Lady
as possible, wore gloves and left nothing of himself behind. Just as he’d left nothing of himself on the other bodies they’d found.

“Crafty son of a bitch,” Beck said under his breath.

“What?” Mia stood up and turned around.

“I said he was very careful.”

“You betcha’,” she agreed. “So far, I’ve found prints on the railing, but I’ll bet my life savings they’re Hal’s. Or maybe one of ours—yours, Viv’s, mine, Meyer’s, even. This is what you grab onto when you’re hopping onto the boat. I did it myself. But there’s no way this guy would be careless enough to leave a print. My guess is that he wiped down anything he may have touched.”

“People watch too damned much TV,” he said. “They think they know how to clean a crime scene as well as any cop. And in many cases, they do. This guy, for one. I don’t see a damned thing. Not even a footprint. I’m betting he came on board in his stocking feet.”

He stood and waved to the ME.

“Might as well do your thing, Viv.”

“Give me just a minute more,” Mia told him. “I think we need to check the cabin.”

“I’ll do that.” He removed the powder and brush from the kit, but hesitated at the tape.

“You finished with this?” he asked, holding it up.

“I will be in a minute. I’m afraid I’ve gotten all I’m going to get.” She stood up and rubbed the small of her back, then reached for the tape. She lifted the impression from the last bit of railing, then transferred the image to a fingerprint card. She handed the tape back to Beck.

He took it with him into the cabin, and when he emerged ten minutes later, he had a small stack of evidence cards under his arm.

“This should do it,” he told Mia, “though I suspect most of the prints we have belong to Hal.”

“We can print ourselves when we get back to the station for elimination, but I’m sure you’re right.” She began to repack the kit. “I certainly don’t expect any surprises.”

“Did you take any prints from the tarp?” Beck asked.

“No.” Mia straightened up. “I’ll do it now.”

“What do you use here for fabric? Ninhydrin, silver nitrate…what?” She poked into the kit and found the silver nitrate. “Ah, silver nitrate, it is.”

She looked up from the large black bag and asked, “Want to give me a hand? You spray, I’ll photograph?”

“Sure.”

She took the camera from the bag, then stepped back so Beck could get what he needed. As he sprayed the solution on the canvas tarp, several reddish-brown prints appeared, which Mia photographed immediately, before they faded in the hot sun. When they were finished, Beck packed the evidence they’d gathered along with the camera, and carried it onto the dock. Since he’d walked to the scene from the municipal building, he’d have to carry it back with him.

“She’s all yours, Viv,” he told the medical examiner.

“Thanks, Beck.” A somber Vivien dropped onto the deck with one of her assistants.

“I’m going back to the office.” Beck turned to Mia and held up the evidence bag.

“I’ll walk back with you.” She stood back and watched respectfully as Vivien directed the careful transfer of the body from the deck of the boat into a body bag. “There really isn’t anything to do here except wait for the press to show up.”

She fell in step with Beck, but stopped halfway across the parking lot.

“Crap. I changed in the ladies’ room at Singer’s and left the bag with my other clothes there. Give me a minute to run inside and grab it?”

“Can you make it fast?”

“Sure.” Mia jogged up to the door and went inside.

She was back in less five minutes. Beck started walking as soon as he saw the door open, so she had to hurry to catch up with him.

“Sorry, Todd was there. I hadn’t met him before. I told him you were trying to get in touch with Lisa, but hadn’t been able to. He said the last time he spoke with her was around an hour ago, but her phone was having trouble keeping a charge, said the battery needed to be replaced. Said he’s taking their kids to his sister’s in Annapolis today to spend the week and he checked in with Lisa to make sure their bags were packed and ready to go, since they’ll be leaving before she gets home from work.”

“I guess Lisa will just head back to the station when she’s finished. In the meantime, we’ll take a look at these prints.”

“You expect to find anything that will point us in the right direction?”

“No. But I want to make certain, get that piece out of the way.”

They completed the walk to Kelly’s Point Drive in silence. When they reached the building, Mia held the door for Beck, and once inside, he stopped to exchange a few words with Garland and Mia went directly to the conference room.

The first thing Beck did when he reached his office was check the fingerprints Mia had lifted from the boat against the prints he had on file for Hal. As suspected, the majority of the prints matched. He printed himself and checked against the remaining prints, and found two that matched his own. That left two other prints unmatched.

He went into the conference room and asked Mia for her prints. One matched a print that was lifted from the rail, which made sense. She’d grabbed onto it as she’d jumped to the deck that morning.

One down, this one from the tarp.

He was packing up envelopes holding the cards with the matched prints when Hal came in.

“You okay?” Beck studied Hal’s face.

“Damnable thing, Beck.” Hal shook his head and lowered himself into the nearest chair. “Damnable.”

“I asked if you were okay.”

“Yeah.” Hal got up and walked into the kitchen. “Want water, soda?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Hal returned for a moment and stood in the doorway taking the lid off a bottle of spring water. He took a long drink, then asked, “You hear from Lisa?”

“No. She must have found someone at the gym who recognized Holly Sheridan or Mindy Kenneher, maybe she’s taking some statements.” Beck tapped his fingers on the desk. “Todd told Mia that Lisa’s having trouble with her phone losing the charge. Which would explain why she’s not getting our calls.”

“Damn cell phones. I’m forever forgetting to recharge my phone, then it makes that beeping sound in the middle of the night to remind me. Drives me nuts.” Hal nodded in the direction of the evidence envelopes on Beck’s desk. “You find anything there worth mentioning?”