Fatal Voyage (26 page)

 Shivering, I waited it out, my back against the stucco, hands under
armpits. I watched drops bead a spiderweb, build, then bow the fibers.

 Its maker watched too, a small brown bundle on an outer filament.

 Islands were born. Continental plates shifted. A score of species
disappeared from the planet forever.

 Suddenly my cell phone shrilled, the sound so unexpected I almost
jumped from the porch.

 I clicked on.

 “No comment!” I shrieked, expecting another reporter.

 Lightning shot straight to the treetops. Thunder snapped.

 “Where the hell are you?” said Lucy Crowe.

 “The storm came up quickly.”

 “You’re outside?”

 “Are you back in Bryson City?”

 “I’m still out at Fontana Lake. Do you want to ring me when you’ve
gotten inside?”

 “That could be a while.” I had no intention of telling her why.

 Crowe spoke to someone else, came back on the line.

 “Afraid I’ve got more bad news for you.”

 I heard voices in the background, then the crackle of a police
radio.

 “Looks like we’ve found Primrose Hobbs.”

 WHILE I WAS MEETING WITH OUR ESTEEMED LIEUTENANT GOVERnor and friends,
the owners of a marina were finding a body.

 As was their custom, Glenn and Irene Boynton rose at dawn and dealt
with the morning rush, renting equipment, selling bait, filling coolers with ice, sandwiches, and
canned drinks. When Irene went to check on a bass boat returned late the previous day, an odd
rippling drew her to the end of the dock. Peering into the water, the woman was terrified to see
two lidless eyes staring back.

 Following Crowe’s directions, I found Fontana Lake, then the narrow
dirt track leading to the marina. The rain had tapered off, though the leaves overhead were still
dripping. I wound through puddles toward the lake, my tires throwing up a spray of mud and
water.

 As the marina came into view, I saw a wrecker, an ambulance, and a pair
of police cruisers bathing a parking area in oscillating red, blue, and yellow light. The marina
stretched along the shore on the lot’s far side. It consisted of a dilapidated rental office-gas
station-general store, with narrow wooden piers jutting into the water at both ends. A wind sock
fluttered from a corner of the building, its bright colors jauntily snapping in the breeze,
jarringly at odds with the grim scene on the ground below.

 A deputy was interviewing a couple in jean shorts and wind-breakers on
the southernmost pier. Their bodies were tense, their faces the color of pale putty.

 Crowe stood on the office steps talking to Tommy Albright, a hospital
pathologist who occasionally did autopsies for the medical examiner.

 Albright was wrinkled and scrawny, with sparse white hair combed
straight across his crown. He’d been making Y-incisions since the Precambrian, but I’d never
worked with him.

 Albright watched me approach then held out a hand.

 We shook. I nodded to Crowe.

 “I understand you knew the victim.”

 Albright tipped his head in the direction of the ambulance. The doors
stood open, revealing a shiny white pouch lying on a collapsible gurney.

 Bulges told me the body bag was already occupied.

 “We pulled her out just before the storm broke. Are you willing to try
a quick visual?”

 “Yes.”

 No! I didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to
identify Primrose Hobbs’s lifeless body.

 We walked to the ambulance and climbed in back. Even with the doors
open the smell was noticeable. I swallowed hard.

 Albright unzipped the bag and the odor rolled over us, a nauseating
cocktail of stagnant mud, seaweed, lake creatures, and putrefying tissue.

 “I’d guess she was in the water two or three days. She’s not scavenged
too badly.”

 Holding my breath, I looked into the bag.

 It was Primrose Hobbs, but it wasn’t. Her face was bloated, her lips
swollen like those of a tropical fish in an aquarium. The dark skin had sloughed in patches,
revealing the pale underside of her epidermis, and giving her body a mottled appearance. Fish or
eels had devoured her eyelids, and nibbled her forehead, cheeks, and nose.

 “Won’t be too much problem with cause,” said Albright. “Course, Tyrell
will want a full autopsy.”

 Primrose’s wrists were wrapped with electrical tape, and I could see a
thin wire embedded in her neck.

 I tasted bile, swallowed hard.

 “Garroted?”

 He nodded. “Bastard wrapped the line around her throat, then tightened
it in back with some kind of tool. Very effective in cutting off the windpipe.”

 I placed a hand over my nose and mouth and leaned in. Jagged lines
scored the flesh on one side of Primrose’s neck, scratched by her nails as she clawed for life
with her bound hands.

 “It’s her,” I said, lunging from the ambulance. I needed air. Miles and
oceans of fresh air.

 Hurrying to the far end of the unoccupied pier, I stood a moment, arms
wrapped around my middle. A boat whined in the distance, grew loud, receded. Waves lapped below
my feet. Frogs croaked from the weeds lining the shore. Life continued, oblivious to the death of
one of its creatures.

 I thought about Primrose, pictured her hobbling out to our final
meeting in the morgue parking lot. A sixty-two-year-old black woman with a nursing degree, a
weight problem, proficiency at cards, and a fondness for rhubarb crumble. There. I did know
something about my friend.

 My chest gave a series of heaves.

 Steady.

 I pulled a ragged breath.

 Think.

 What could Primrose have done, known, or seen that could have brought
such violence down on her? Was she killed because of her involvement with me?

 Another tremor. I gulped air.

 Or was I magnifying my own role? Was her death random? We Americans are
the world’s leading producers of homicide. Was Primrose Hobbs bound and strangled for nothing
more than her car? That made no sense. Not the garroting and the duct tape. This was a planned
murder and she was the intended victim. But why?

 Hearing doors slam, I turned. The attendants were climbing into the
front of the ambulance. Seconds later, the engine revved, and the vehicle crawled up the dirt
road.

 Good-bye, old friend. If I brought you to this, please, please, forgive
me. My lower lip trembled, and I bit down hard.

 You will not cry. But why not? Why hold back tears of mourning for a
good and gentle person?

 I looked out across the lake. The sky was clearing, and the pines on
the far shore stood out blue-black against the first pink rays of dusk.

 I recalled something else.

 Primrose Hobbs loved sunsets. I gazed at the sunset and wept until I
felt angry. Beyond angry. I felt a hot, red rage burning inside me.

 Bridle it, Brennan. Use it.

 Vowing to find answers, I drew a deep breath and walked up the pier to
rejoin Crowe and Albright.

 “What did she drive?” I asked.

 Crowe consulted a spiral pad.

 “Blue Honda Civic. Ninety-four. North Carolina plates.”

 “It’s not parked at the Riverbank Inn.”

 Crowe looked at me strangely.

 “Car could be on its way to Saudi Arabia by now,” said Albright.

 “I told you that the victim was helping me with my investigation.”

 “I’ll want to talk to you about that.” Crowe.

 “Find anything here?” I asked.

 “We’re still looking.”

 “Tire tracks? Footprints?” I knew it was stupid as soon as I said
it.

 The rain would have obliterated such impressions.

 Crowe shook her head.

 I scanned the pickups and SUVs left behind by fishermen and pleasure
boaters. Two sixteen-foot aluminum outboards bobbed in their slips.

 “Any permanent tie-ups at the marina?”

 “It’s strictly a rental business.”

 “That means a lot of people coming and going every day. Pretty busy
spot for a body dump.”

 “Rentals are due back by eight P.M. Apparently things quiet down after
that.”

 I indicated the couple with the putty faces. They were alone on the
dock now, hands in their pockets, unsure what they were supposed to do next.

 “Are those the owners?”

 “Glenn and Irene Boynton. They say they’re here every night until
eleven, return around six in the morning. They live up the road.”

 Crowe indicated the dirt track.

 “They claim to notice cars at night. Worry about kids messing with
their boats. Neither one heard or saw a thing over the past three days.

 For what that’s worth. A perp wouldn’t exactly advertise that he was
using your dock to off-load a corpse.“

 The celery eyes appraised the scene, came back to me.

 “But you’re right. This would be an odd choice. There’s a small road
kisses the shore about a half mile up from here. We’re thinking that was the toss-in point.”

 “Two, three days seems a little long for the currents to carry her
here,” added Albright. “Body may have dead headed awhile.”

 “Deadheaded?” I snapped, furious at his callousness.

 “Sorry. Old logging term. Refers to snagged timber.”

 I was almost afraid to ask the next question.

 “Was she sexually assaulted?”

 “Clothing’s on, underwear’s in place. I’ll test for semen, but I doubt
it.”

 We stood silent in the gathering dusk. Behind us, the docks creaked and
settled against the waves. A cold breeze blew off the water, carrying the scent of fish and
gasoline.

 “Why would someone garrote an old lady?” Though I spoke aloud, the
question was really for me, not my companions.

 “Why do these sick bastards do any of the things they do?” Albright
replied.

 I left them and walked toward Ryan’s car. The ambulance and wrecker
were gone, but the cruisers remained, pulsing blue light across the muddy lot. I sat a moment,
staring at the hundreds of prints left by the feet of ambulance attendants, wrecker operators,
police, the pathologist, and myself. Primrose’s last disaster scene.

 I turned the key and headed back toward Bryson City, tears coursing
down my cheeks.

 When I checked my messages later that evening, I found one from Lucy
Crowe. I returned her call and told her everything I knew about Primrose Hobbs, ending with our
Sunday-morning rendezvous at the morgue.

 “And that foot and all its paperwork are now missing?”

“So I was told.

 Primrose was probably the last person to see the stuff.“

 “Parker Davenport told you she signed it out. Did she sign it back
in?”

 “Good question.”

 “Tell me about security.”

 “All DMORT and ME personnel have IDs, as do the people from your
department and the Bryson City PD who work security. A guard checks IDs at the perimeter fence,
and there’s a sign in sign out sheet inside the morgue. A color-coded dot goes on your badge each
day.”

 “Why?”

 “In case someone manages to duplicate the ID, they’d have no way of
knowing that day’s color.”

 “What about after hours?”

 “By now there’s probably a smaller crew left at the morgue, mostly
records and computer staff, some medical personnel. There’d be no one there at night except your
deputy or a Bryson City cop.”

 I pictured the lieutenant governor with his videocasette.

 “There is a surveillance camera on the gate.”

 “What about the computers?”

 “Every V. I.P user has a password, and only a limited number of people
can enter or delete data.”

 “Assuming Hobbs returned it, where would that foot have been?”

 “At the end of the day everything goes into reefer trucks marked
‘unprocessed,” ’ process,“ or ‘.” Cases are located with a computer tracking system.“

 “How hard would it be to break in?”

 “High school kids have hacked the Pentagon.”

 I heard distant conversation, like voices drifting through a worm-hole
in space.

 “Sheriff, I think Primrose Hobbs was murdered because of that
foot.”

 “Or the thing could be a biological specimen.”

 “A woman examines an object which is the subject of controversy, that
object disappears, and the woman turns up dead three days later. If there’s no link it’s one hell
of a coincidence.”

 “We’re looking at every angle.”

 “Have you learned why no one reported her missing?”

 “Apparently, parts of the operation are shifting to Charlotte. When
Hobbs failed to show at the morgue on Monday, her coworkers figured she had gone there. Folks in
Charlotte assumed she was still in Bryson City. She was in the habit of phoning her son on
Saturdays, so he had no clue that anything was amiss.”

 I wondered about Primrose’s son. Was he married? A father? In the
army? Gay? Were mother and child close? Occasionally my work casts me as the bearer of
life’s most terrible news. In one visit, families are shattered, lives forever altered. Pete had
said that most marine officers in Vietnam days would rather engage the enemy than visit a home in
middle America to deliver a message of death. I wholeheartedly shared those sentiments.

 I imagined the son’s face, blank at first, confused. Then, with
comprehension, agony, grief, the pain of an open wound. I closed my eyes, sharing at that moment
his crushing despair.

 “I dropped in at the Riverbank Inn.”

 Crowe’s voice brought me back.

 “After the marina, I swung by for a chat with Ralph and Brenda,” she
said. “They admitted they hadn’t seen Hobbs since Sunday, but didn’t consider it odd. She’d left
without explanation twice during her stay, so they assumed she’d gone off again.”

 “Gone off where?”

 “They figured she was visiting family.”

 “And?”

“Her room suggested otherwise. All her toiletries were there, toothbrush,
dental floss, face cream, the things a woman takes when she travels. Her clothes were still in
the dresser, suitcase empty under the bed. Her arthritis medication was sitting on the
nightstand.”