Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (29 page)

Nick peeled his gaze from Kate and looked over at Keith. “Kate was just asking about the statue, Rán.”

A sinking weight slid through Kate, as though she were one of Nick’s sunken ships, broken and raided of all that used to be hers.

“The statue of Rán?” Keith said, turning to her with a sly smile. He dropped the duffle bag on the table. Keith noticed her eyeing the bag. “The statue of Rán, yes. That is quite a statue, isn’t it?” He unzipped the bag. “What could be inside?” he asked in a way as though inviting Kate to come take a look.

Kate didn’t move, couldn’t if she had tried. She could barely even breathe. What was wrong with Nick? He was the one who had saved her, not the one who had something to do with her attack? With Suzanne’s death? And Brooke’s? Questions that twisted up inside her like snakes.

Kate wracked her mind for a way to get out of there, to get back home to David. She reached in her pocket for her phone and realized with a shot of panic she had left it in the car.

Keith chuckled. “All right, be that way.” He pulled a wadded-up towel from the bag and unwrapped it. The sight of the statue pushed a wave of tremors into Kate. She gasped, her eyes darting to Nick. He wasn’t smiling, not like Keith. She could read him now. His distance was guilt and maybe something else, something not as remorseful.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Keith said. He set the statue down on the table for them all to see, then reached for a handful of pistachios in his pocket and began cracking the shells. The sound grated against her ears.

Kate held her gaze on Nick. “I trusted you.”

“It wasn’t your Nicky, sweetheart,” Keith said.

Kate glanced over at Keith, her hand now firm on the stairway railing. “You attacked me in my house? Did you know this, Nick?”

“Me?” Keith said. “C’mon, Kate. I’m a police officer. I do have morals. I wouldn’t hurt a soul, let alone someone as pretty as you.” His smile faded. “But I know who did, and that fella, well, he’s in a lot of trouble at the moment.”

Kate knew who he was referring to. “How do you know Andre?”

“Like I said, I’m a cop. Obviously, I have my resources.” He dusted off the pistachio shells from his hands and stepped closer to Kate. She moved back, along the staircase.

Nick walked around the table, as though getting ready to intervene between her and Keith if he had too. “Keith was called in to the scene at Suzanne’s house,” Nick said.

Kate scowled at Keith. “But I searched for the statue before she died. It wasn’t there.”

Keith smiled. “Bet you didn’t check between the headboard and the mattress, did you?” He picked up the statue and leaned in to her, prompting Nick to step closer. “This is my statue,” he said in a sharp, deep tone. You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to find it and how much I’ve sacrificed.”

Kate moved away from him, up the second step of the staircase. She glanced at both Keith and Nick. “And you have no idea what it means to have that statue in your possession. It’s cursed. You will die.”

Kate watched Keith and Nick exchange a look, their eyes full of secrets or lies or both. “You already know about the curse, don’t you?” she said, suddenly realizing they knew the man who had died before Brooke. She turned to Nick. “You knew him? The man who washed ashore at Rockaway.”

“He was our partner, Jim Kelley,” Keith said. “Jim had it in his hand when he died. Brooke Jennings stole it from him.

“Then I think it’s clear who it really belongs to.”

Nick didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. Kate thought his guilt-ridden eyes said it all.

***

Kate couldn’t leave Nick’s place fast enough. She ran to her car and sped away without looking back. The heavy burden of disappointment and betrayal weighed on her chest as she realized Nick wasn’t who she thought he was. He might have saved her multiple times, but for what reason? The statue? To think she had just left the house where the statue was, to think it was actually in Nick’s possession, brought an ache to her stomach.

She stopped at the red light before merging onto the freeway that crossed the Burnside Bridge to the other side of town. Faint ripples of green and gold still twisted through the sky, brighter now with dusk thick at the horizon. Below the ramp to the bridge, Kate spotted a police car parked along the street ticketing a violator. She wondered how much truth was behind Keith’s story. Keith and his honorable badge. Had he really found the statue when investigating Suzanne’s house?

The light turned green and Kate merged onto the bridge that crossed over the Willamette River. Either way, she knew one thing for sure: Keith was just as dirty as Andre, and in the end, they both probably had blood on their hands. One of them had attacked her and killed Suzanne. Keith kept pointing to Andre, but Kate didn’t trust him.

Below, on the other side of the river, a marina stretched along the shoreline. Two sailboats rocked on the waters at the dock. Kate watched them with an unexpected rise of anger inside. She was mad, furious at how Keith had made her feel and overly disappointed by Nick’s involvement with it all. Keith was a bad cop, that much she did know. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Thea, about her and Wells witnessing someone breaking into Andre’s boatshed. There was no doubt in her mind that someone was Keith. As she came off the bridge at the next downtown exit, Kate slowed as an idea occurred to her. She pulled off on the next exit and found a place to park along the street. She reached for her phone and dialed David’s number.

“Hey, you on your way home?” he said, after picking up.

“I was, but now I’m thinking of doing something else, something that would require your assistance and a sense of adventure.” Kate wanted proof that Keith had been at Andre’s dock. If she could find some kind of validation, it might be enough for Wells to turn his investigation on Keith, corroborate his true involvement in the case. The one thing that might prove this was the one thing Keith never would have thought would be used against him—his habit of cracking pistachio shells. Every time she had seen him, he was eating shelled pistachios. Of those nuts had replaced his smoking habit, there was a good chance those shells would be down at Andre’s dock where Thea had a run in with Wells and the mystery man.

“I’m afraid to ask,” David replied.

“How would you like to investigate a marina with me?”

“I wouldn’t. Sounds like trouble.”

“But you wouldn’t want me to go there alone, either, would you?”

She heard him sigh.

“Where at?”

“About 10 blocks from downtown at the Willamette Moorage Park.”

“I’ll be there in twenty,” David said. “Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Just don’t get out of your car, okay? Not until I get there.”

“Okay, I promise.”

Kate drove to the Willamette Moorage Park where Thea and Wells had their little excursion together, a thought that still made her smile imagining the two of them on a mission. Once she pulled in, she needed to use a restroom. It would only take her five minutes. David wouldn’t even know.

Across the park, lights lit up a small, white stucco building. Kate headed to the open entrance. Her eyes skipped across the tall shadows. The stalls were empty, save for graffiti of those who claimed they had been there. She quickly went to the restroom, rinsed her hands, and walked back to her car. On the way there, she noticed another trail down by the river that gave a glimpse of the marina. She wanted to see the docks and how they were laid out. With no other cars around and Andre probably still at the station, what or who did she have to fear? Keith already had his statue.

Keeping an eye on her surroundings, Kate steered down the short trail and studied the layout of the boatsheds below. There was about twenty of them, with Andre’s somewhere near the end. She remembered the number of his boatshed, 17, same as her birthday.

Not wanting to be out of the car when David arrived, Kate turned around to head back. The flitting shadow of a person swept into her periphery. Then a man stepped in front of her.

“Going somewhere?”

She knew that voice, had heard its growl before. As he stepped closer, a blade of yellow light from the marina sliced across his face. It was Andre…holding a gun.

The train on the other side of the river blared its horn, coalescing with the horror screaming in Kate’s mind. A restless wind gusted through the parking lot and further rooted her in the crosshairs of Andre’s gun. His words rang smooth, grave as any tolling bell. Her eyes locked on to the barrel like a magnet, frozen in hostile memories of the past, of the night at the cemetery when she had discovered—too late—who Jev’s killer was. The nightmare stormed back to her, the same crippling terror, even though this time, she knew all along, had known from the moment Andre first stepped through her front door that he was dangerous and should be avoided. But here she was, under his gun.

A flood of ice-cold fear slowed her thoughts to slush. She fought for breath, but couldn’t against the strap-hold of her panic.

Andre shook his head, his eyes not moving from hers. A faint smile curled over his lips. “How’s your head?”

Anger swelled deep and pushed out her voice. “What do you want, Andre?” Buy time, she thought, until David arrived. Negotiate. She knew exactly what Andre wanted, had just seen the statue thirty minutes ago. He would be very interested to know that. “Your statue back?”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t have it.” Stall him more. David had to arrive any minute.

“Liar.” He brought the barrel of the gun up to her face.

Kate tensed under the thought of him actually pulling the trigger. She forced herself to stay calm. “I know who has it. I saw the statue less than an hour ago.”

Andre narrowed his eyes, as though wondering how much he should trust her and what she was telling him. Kate thought of Nick. Despite his dishonesty, she still didn’t want to put him in any danger. But Keith was a trained police officer and knew how to handle situations like this. If David didn’t show soon, she would have no choice but to lead Andre to the Dawn Maiden.  

“Who and where?” Andre asked.

“The Dawn Maiden. It’s a boat docked at the Riverplace Marina.”

“How do you know it’s there?”

“I told you. I just saw it. That’s where they’re headed now.”

Andre’s face contorted with what looked like seething anger. His front teeth flashed behind a grimace, and his eyes were darker than a moonless night. He turned around, motioning to Kate with his gun to walk back up the trail. “Go. There’s a red car at the top of the trail. Get in it. If you even think about running, phoning someone, or screaming, I’ll shoot you dead.”

Where was David?

The confidence in Andre’s voice unnerved Kate, because she knew well enough that Andre had specific plans and the grit to see them through.

Kate had to leave David some kind of a sign of where she was going. She slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the business card she had picked up at Nick’s, the one about the Dawn Maiden voyages. It would have to work. David would search for her and likely spot the white card on the ground. Now, she just needed to drop it without Andre noticing. She needed a distraction.

Kate waited until they had reached her car parked along the edge of the hillside. Then, at the same time she pulled the card from her pocket, she made herself trip and stuck her hands out, one palm flat over the card. Her knees slammed into sharp rock, and a stab of pain burned up her thigh. At least her fall appeared authentic.

Andre grabbed the back of her shirt. “Get up, now!”

Kate stood, trying to step on the card as she did so he wouldn’t notice it. They kept walking. Kate glanced back, as though looking at her car, but instead checked to see if the card was in a spot where David would see it. She saw it, only ten feet from her car. When David came to the lot, and found her car there, but her missing, he would search the area. He would find the business card on the ground, and it wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together. The Dawn Maiden. Where else would she be? He had already told her earlier that he knew Nick owned a ‘nice boat’. He would know what to do. Except a breeze blew down from above, a brutal, wicked breath that must have belonged to Rán.

In horrid disbelief, Kate watched the wind whip the card up into a somersaulting spiral and tumble over a rock on the other side of the embankment and into the dark waters of the river below.

***

The cold wind rocked against Wells’ car as he sat in the police station parking lot, in awe at the occasional ripple of green and gold color from what had to be the aurora borealis. He still reeled from the news that Suzanne Jones’ death was an accident. It didn’t make sense. Couldn’t be true. The coincidences were too great. He wasn’t the only one who had suspected foul play. So did Officer Keith Davidson. He had been snooping through his office, digging up information on Andre Singer. He knew something about the man too.

Wells checked his clock. It was only nine. Not too late to drive across town and over to Thea’s neighborhood. He wanted to tell her right away, in person, that it wasn’t Suzanne’s blood on her pants. He owed her that much. Plus, he just wanted to see her. No matter the reason.

His phone buzzed on the dashboard. Wells checked the display, shocked and excited to see Thea’s name. He answered.

“Good evening, Ms. Wright.”

“I need your help.”

She sounded panicked, which was unlike her. Wells sat up and started his car. “What’s going on?”

“I’m at Andre’s dock with David. It’s a longer story than I have time to explain. We think Kate’s gone missing. Her car is here, but she’s nowhere to be found. She promised David she would be here. I’m worried. Have you heard from her?”

“No, not today.”

“If she is with Andre, where would he have taken her?”

Andre wanted two things, Wells thought. The statue and the money that someone had stolen from him. Officer Keith Davidson. “Thea, do you know an officer by the name of Keith Davidson? Has Kate ever mentioned him?”

“That doesn’t sound familiar,” Thea said.

There was a long pause on the line, as she asked David. Wells heard them discussing something, but not their actual words. He passed through a side street to avoid traffic lights.

Thea came back on the line. “No, but what about a Nick Bratton?”

“Yes. Hold on.” He was the one who had brought Kate to the hospital. Wells typed his name into the database. He searched through his records and then came across some background information that shot up like a red flag. “The Dawn Maiden. Have you heard that before?”

Thea repeated it, and Wells heard David say yes.

“David says it’s a boat docked at the Riverplace Marina,” Thea said. “But why would she be there?”

It wasn’t a question he could answer. He wasn’t sure what Nick Bratton, Andre Singer, and Keith Davidson shared in common, if anything, but the names kept returning to him, and recurring things almost always had connections.

“I can’t say right now, but I’m about ten minutes from there.”

“We’re only five minutes away,” Thea replied.

“I don’t want you and David going down to the docks. It’s too dangerous, Thea.”

“Five minutes could save Kate’s life. I’m sorry, Wells. We’ll meet you there.”

“Wait!” Wells said.

“What?”

“It wasn’t Suzanne’s blood,” he said.

“You already knew that,” Thea said in a tone that implied forgiveness.

“Thea, don’t do anything until I get there, please?”

“Then you’d better hurry.”

She’d hung up.

Wells slammed on the gas pedal and sped through the backstreets of southeast Portland with his lights on. He crossed over Burnside Street and steered for the Steel Bridge. It would drop him down on National Parkway, a straight shot to the Riverplace Marina where the Dawn Maiden was docked. He brought up Nick Bratton’s phone number and called him. Either he wasn’t home or he wasn’t answering his phone. Neither of which gave him solace.

***

Nick followed Keith down the dock, each of them carrying a load of tanks and scuba gear. Barry was running late, having scoped out some of the pawn shops in town, but would be by in the hour. After the stormy weather tonight, the next few days promised perfect conditions for ocean diving. Nick didn’t care. He didn’t care about much now that Kate knew about him and his having possession of the statue. She probably thought he had something to do with her attack as much as he had suspected Keith did, but who knew what lengths Keith would have gone to in order to obtain the statue. He carried it with him everywhere he went now, so as not to lose what mattered most to him. Nick hadn’t kept Matt that close and wondered how things would have been different had he done so.

Nick stopped in front of the Dawn Maiden, watching another ripple of gold and green wave across the sky. The stars shone bright and the only sound in the marina was the chirp of crickets and a steady breeze through the trees, the perfect place for a nighttime picnic with the perfect girl.

Keith spoke, ruining his chance to daydream about Kate. “Whoever thought we’d see the aurora borealis in Portland, Oregon?” Keith glanced back at Nick. “That’s gotta be a good omen, right?” He rubbed the back of his neck and winced.

Nick paused at the ladder. “What is it?”

Keith turned away from him. “It’s nothing.”

“You have the mark, don’t you?”

Keith swung around. “Don’t go talkin’ all curses and shit. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Nick didn’t say anything. What did it really matter anymore?

The sound of a car’s engine whined behind them in the parking lot. Nick spun around. Headlights beamed through the line of other cars and raced toward the water’s edge. Something was up. Keith locked his attention on the car. Nick wanted to pretend he hadn’t seen it, just undock the boat, get on, and motor away, because in the back of his mind, he knew trouble had arrived and somehow, it involved them.

“Who the hell is that?” Keith said. He reached into his bag and pulled out his gun, quickly checking that the magazine was loaded.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good,” Nick replied.

Two people exited the car. He knew one of them immediately. “It’s Kate. Put the gun down,” Nick said.

“Not until I know who the other person is. Not until I know we’re safe.”

But the situation unfolding before them was not one Nick felt at ease with. He could see that Kate wasn’t walking with the man of her own accord. The man led her toward them with a gun at her back. She looked surprisingly calm given the circumstances.

“I know who that is,” Keith said.

“Mind telling me?” Nick asked.

“His name is Andre Singer. This may get a little ugly, bro,” he said. “Just follow my lead.”

Panic hit Nick square in the chest. He dropped his bags. Keith stepped forward, confident and poised, his gun firmly positioned on Kate and Andre. A tempest brewed behind Andre’s eyes. He carried himself with confidence, something likely gained through experience. Keith’s gun didn’t seem to bother him a bit. As far as he was concerned, he had the upper hand. He stopped Kate ten feet away from them. Her eyes darted between him and Keith, as if weighing the situation and how they were all going to escape.

“Drop the gun in the water,” Andre said.

“Can’t do that,” Keith replied. “I’m an officer of the law.”

“You’re going to have trouble explaining things if the girl dies on your watch.”

Andre pushed the barrel against the back of Kate’s head. She winced. Nick’s legs nearly buckled beneath him. Seeing a gun on Kate was one of the worst things he had ever witnessed, and it took everything in him to hold back the urge to run to her.

“Do it slowly,” Andre said to Keith. “One flinch from you, and you’ll be wearing her.”

Kate closed her eyes as though accepting her fate.

“There’s no way you’ll get away with it, Andre,” Keith said, keeping his stance with the gun. “You’re already a suspect for Suzanne’s murder.”

Andre laughed, a craze-filled snicker like the jangle of loose marbles. “You don’t know what I can and can’t get away with, Officer Davidson, and apparently you didn’t get the bulletin. Suzanne died of natural causes. That’s the coroner’s words. Now, throw the goddamn gun in the river!”

Kate shook against the high-pitch of his shouts.

“Give it up!” Nick shouted at Keith. “Throw it in the water!”

Keith contemplated for a moment, and then slowly took his left hand off the butt of the gun and dangled it between his thumb and index finger. He extended it away from himself and over the water. “It’s cool, all is cool,” he said. The gun dropped with a splash into the river.

A flash of disappointment crossed Kate’s face. She stared at Nick, and he wished he could tell her he was sorry. He should have been able to avoid this, should have taken the statue from Keith and turned it in to authorities. Anything but letting it get to this, he thought.

“Smart choice,” Andre said. “Now, I’m sure you’ve got enough brains to know why I’m here.”

“You want the statue,” Keith said.

“I guess I pegged you wrong,” Andre replied. “You’re not an idiot after all. Just an asshole.”

“Too bad you’re both,” Keith said.