Thomas Prescott Superpack (24 page)

Chapter 52

Caitlin, Caleb, and I wheeled the gurney to the autopsy room and helped get Kim’s cadaver situated on the cold steel table. The four of us put on surgical gloves and Caitlin extracted a scalpel from an array of tools resting on what looked to be a cafeteria issued lunch tray. As she touched the tip of the scalpel to Kim’s flesh, Caleb and I gave each other a strained glance. I wasn’t apprehensive of being wrong about the eyes being in Kim’s stomach, so much as I was the idea that if the eyes weren’t there, all hope was lost for Alex.

Gregory was at the foot of the table, mentally and literally biting his inner lip. I wasn’t altogether sure what was going through his mind as Caitlin flexed her wrist and the scalpel slid into the hardened flesh. Caitlin made a long incision, then administered two pairs of clips to hold back the thick area of fat tissue directly above the stomach.

I peered into the human crevasse; the stomach was beige, the color of Silly Putty, and smaller than I would have imagined. Caitlin applied a generous amount of force to the tissue and it folded open like a TV turkey.

Caleb looked up stupefied, “How? How did you know?”

Sitting amid a pile of gray mass were two large protuberances. They were cragged and yellow, but there was no denying the lumps of tissue were once eyes.

Caitlin looked up in disbelief, “Well, I’ll be.”

Gregory had made his way over for a good angle and shook his head in what I surmised was absolute awe at my deductive capabilities. The four of us stood in silence, taking in the implications of the sight.

Caleb broke the silence, “So, what exactly are her eyes seeing?”

Caitlin said she would run every test imaginable and get back to us by five. Caleb rode back with me, and once safely in the car he repeated his earlier question, “How did you know?”

I told him about the tape recorder and Conner’s involvement. He played Devil’s Advocate, but was unable to convince me of Conner’s innocence. There were a few inadequacies, and I tried Conner’s cell to have them pacified, but he wasn’t taking my calls.

Once back at 14 Surry Woods Drive, Caleb and I hopped out of the Range Rover and I whispered on the way up the steps, “Keep a lid on the Conner bug. I don’t want these idiots doing anything stupid. Best to keep them in the dark.”

He nodded and we pushed through the front door. Gleason was sitting at the table and said, “Gregory filled me in on most of the details. I can’t believe this shit. When and where did you get the hunch Kim’s eyes were hiding in her stomach?”

“I’m not sure. I started thinking maybe one of those fifty thousand birds had gotten hold of them. Bird—eat—stomach, I’m not sure. From there, it just popped in my head.”

He did a half shrug which either meant he bought my lie, or he didn’t really care in the first place. Gleason stood, “Do we have any leads on what her eyes may have been seeing? They
were sitting in her stomach, there had to be something else in there.”

I think Gleason was expecting a key and some magical, indigestible map of sorts. I said, “Unfortunately, everything else was digested and a different shade of gray. Caitlin is doing some tests on the contents as we speak. Hopefully, something jumps out at her and we can get moving on this.”

I didn’t want to ask, but a driving force propelled to bad news brought about the question, “Heard anything from Conner?”

He shook his head and said, “There’s a good possibility we may never hear from Conner again.”

If only that were true.

Gregory walked through the door thirty minutes later with two pizza boxes. I guess he wanted to even the score for the breakfast burrito I’d bought him ASAP. Lacy came down the stairs and was into her second slice before I’d handed out paper towel squares. She took a third slice and retired to the living room to listen to the Mariners-Indians game seven playoff.

I was tinkering with the idea of having a quick chat with her, but I didn’t think she would take the news of having slept with a serial killer—or a serial killer’s secretary—lightly. I checked the clock, it was ten to five. Four hours until Alex’s date with death.

We couldn’t do much until we heard back from Caitlin, and I had a nut to crack with Gregory. I took a bite of sausage, leaned back in my chair and said, “I have a proposition for you Toddy. How’s this sound? I’ll cut you a check for three grand right now for Lacy’s lighthouse painting. You tell Charles Mangrove you were outbid, give him his twenty-five hundred back, and walk with five hundred for yourself.”

Gregory shook his head, “That’s not the painting I bid on for Director Mangrove.”

Then who? No, he wouldn’t. I choked on my bite of pizza for a few unpleasant seconds, before stammering, “You mean to tell me you bid on that painting for yourself.”

He took a bite of pizza to hide his smirk and said, “We must have the same taste in art.”

It was lucky for Gregory my cell phone rang, or he would have ate his next slice of pizza through a straw. I grabbed my cell off the table and flipped it open, “Prescott.”

“It’s Caitlin.”

Caleb mouthed, “Put it on speaker.”

I hit the speaker button and set the phone atop the two pizza boxes. “All right, shoot.”

Caitlin started, “I did some preliminary tests and it appears the remnants in Kim’s stomach had been sitting there for about an hour before she was killed. Looks like some peanut butter crackers and milk, or some other dairy.”

Caleb bowed his head and murmured, “Kim always brought a pack of crackers and two lemon yogurts to the library when she studied.”

Caitlin continued, “I did a molecular scan and everything checks out as amino acid based. Nothing alien. No dirt, rocks, anything of that sort.”

Sorry Glease. No ring, no key, no map.

I asked, “Did you do a blood test?”

“Yep. Glucose levels were stable. No poisons. No alcohol. No barbiturates. Blood work’s clean as a whistle.”

“So what you’re telling me is, you didn’t find anything abnormal, nothing seemed tainted by a second party, and that we are royally and totally fucked.”

“Not exactly.”

The four of us froze.

Caitlin said passively, “There was one thing.”

The refrigerator’s incessant humming resembled a firing jet engine as Caitlin started back in, “I was arranging Kim’s corpse into the body bag and was forced to move one of her hands to make room for her abdomen. As I was moving it, I noticed a cyanosis of the nail bed I hadn’t caught at first glance. It appeared as though Kim suffered from peripheral vasoconstriction.”

Gleason stole the words out of my mouth, “What’s that translate to in laymen’s terms?”

“I’m getting to that. It means that Kim Welding’s fingernails were blue, which is consistent with death by asphyxia.”

Gregory stated, “So you’re saying Kim Welding was strangled.”

Caitlin said flatly, “No, I’m saying Kim Welding was drowned.”

Chapter 53

Drowned? Why the sudden change in M.O. The four of us looked to one another for answers, but when there’s no Scantron, it’s hard to fill in a bubble.

Caitlin continued, “The nails started me thinking, and I did some backtracking. Kim’s body appeared to undergo a blood shift. A blood shift is the shifting of blood to the thoracic cavity, the chest between the diaphragm and the neck, to avoid the collapse of the lungs under higher pressure during drowning.”

Gregory said, “Big deal. So Tristen drowned her before he killed her. That doesn’t change much.”

Caitlin said, “There’s more.”

More? My stomach clenched. The four of us inched as close to the phone as possible without smashing our heads together.

“In most victims, the larynx relaxes sometime after unconsciousness and water fills the lungs. This is what we call a wet drowning. Water, regardless of freshwater or saltwater, will damage the inside surface of the lungs, collapse the alveoli, and cause a hardening of the lungs with a reduced ability to exchange air. Freshwater contains less salt than blood, and will therefore be absorbed by the bloodstream due to osmosis. Saltwater is much saltier than blood, and due to osmosis, water will leave the bloodstream and enter the lungs.”

Gregory beat me to the punch, “So what?”

“So there was no evidence of water in Kim’s lungs.”

Gregory again beat me to the stupid button, “Meaning?”

Caleb cleared up the matter for the three idiots sitting next to him, “Meaning, Kim was drowned in a fresh body of water and not in the Atlantic.”

“Precisely,” Caitlin replied.

We terminated the call with Caitlin and stared blankly at one another. I felt like I was riding the short bus, with two of my even more handicapped friends. Let me get this straight, Tristen and/or Conner, made Kim swallow her eyes, drowned her in a freshwater body of water, transported her to the Roque Bluffs, dismembered her, and stuffed her in a lobster cage all in a time span of one hour. This was a lot of information to absorb.

We’d ended the call with Caitlin at five fifteen, it was now almost six and we hadn’t made a lick of sense of any of the new information. Gleason offered, “There are two thousand lakes in Maine, and about the same number of rivers. This would be in relation to you, Thomas. You got a fishing hole somewhere?”

“Nope, not here. I did in Washington.” I was more talking to myself than the other three. I said to the three of them, “He started this in Maine and he’s going to finish it in Maine.”

We were all interrupted by Lacy hopping around in the living room screaming, “Oh, my God. They came back.”

Her beloved Mariners had apparently made a game of it. Caleb shook his head at Lacy and then straightened up, “What about the lake Alex’s house is built on.”

Gregory and Gleason’s eyes widened and Gleason said, “That could be something.”

By eight, Alex’s house and Lake Wesserunett was our best bet. Lacy was all smiles and seemed disappointed I made her ride with Gleason and Gregory. I didn’t want her to overhear Caleb and I talk about Conner’s involvement just yet.

We were rocketing westbound along I-95 in the Range Rover two car lengths behind the Caprice when Caleb shook his head and said, “This isn’t right. It’s too vague. Have you seen the lake, it’s enormous. How are we going to know where to look? From the beginning, this thing hasn’t been a treasure hunt, it’s been a dead giveaway.”

I agreed with the kid. The lake was about six miles around and we were flying on the loose connection between Alex and myself. The Caprice signaled to get off the highway at the Route 2 junction. I eased the SUV into the exit lane behind the Caprice. The Range Rover had two wheels down the ramp when Caleb yanked the wheel vaulting us back onto the highway.

I slammed on the brakes and we came to a skidding halt. Caleb said serenely, “Turn around.”

I floored the Range Rover through the grass dividing the traffic and headed east on the freeway. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“All the murder sites have been boat accessible. Your house, the lighthouse, your boat, and the bluff. Why would this time be any different?”

He was right. All the sites had been boat accessible and the lake Alex’s house backed up to was landlocked. I felt Caleb raise himself an inch off his seat with his fingertips and waited for him to apprise me of Alex’s death site. He said, “You row with Conner at the Verona Rowing Club, correct?”

I nodded.

“Did you know until about two years ago it was called the Penobscot Bay- River Rowing Club?”

I’d never read about this in the newsletter. “What? Penobscot Bay-River?” “The club is positioned where the Penobscot River runs into the Penobscot Bay. Haven’t you ever wondered why the water is so calm in that
area. It’s because the two currents flow against each other to create relative equilibrium.”

“So then it would be half river water, half Atlantic ocean.”

“I said relative equilibrium. Think how the water flows. And the fish you see.”

The water flowed out to sea. The fish were all freshwater. It all fit. We would find Alex on the grounds of the Verona Rowing Club.

I looked at the dash, it was 8:26 P.M. If we found her in the next fifteen minutes she would be alive. Sixteen and she would be dead.

Chapter 54

We were barreling along the freeway at 110 mph when the fatal minute flickered on the dash, 8:41 P.M.

Seven minutes later, we pulled into the barren Verona Rowing Club parking lot. The wind had picked up considerably and the last of the scullers had called it quits hours earlier. My phone rang for the sixth time in twelve minutes and I flipped it open, stating, “Alex is at the Verona Rowing Club.”

Gleason didn’t ask how I knew this, “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Stay in the parking lot. I don’t want Lacy leaving the car.”

“You’re the boss.”

You’re the boss?
If I hadn’t been in a dead sprint to the club entrance I would have stopped to shit my pants. The place shut down at six on Sundays and the entrance doors were locked. I peered through the glass but didn’t see a janitor vacuuming with headphones on like in the movies. Alex wasn’t going to be inside and Caleb and I went to work on the eight-foot terracotta wall enclosing the club.

The wind was whipping the glass water out to sea and I squinted into the horizon. I tapped Caleb on the shoulder and pointed straight out. “Do you see anything out there?”

He didn’t, but I could have sworn I glimmered the salient shadow of a stern amid the high waves. I gave the ocean a hard stare, but didn’t see the mirage again. Caleb and I were protected from the gusting wind, but it was still remarkably loud and Caleb yelled, “Where do you think she is?”

I could think of only one place we would find Alex’s body and started running.

They kept the shells in a long brick storage shelter across the bridge. Caleb followed behind me as I did a steady jog across the football field length bridge.

We came to the wrought iron door locked with thick cable and a rotund Masterlock. I pulled my automatic from my waistband and fired off three shots in quick succession. The third round did the trick and the broken cable shuttered against the steel door. Caleb pulled the cables aside as I wrenched the heavy door open. The long room was musty and darkly lit with overhanging garage lighting.

The shells were held in wooden mounting much like submarine barracks, four high and twenty five long on each side. Conner’s shell was in L7C, the third slot of the seventh row on the left side. I placed my hand on the hard wood as if I could tell if death had visited the shell simply by its temperature. I lolled the shell on its side and pieces of Alex’s body didn’t come tumbling out.

Caleb asked, “Should we check them all real quick?”

Checking two hundred shells real quick still translated into one big, slow, sloppy chore. If Alex’s body wasn’t stuffed in Conner’s shell then it wasn’t here. It’s not like I had a shell here.

Whap.

But I did have a locker.

We hightailed it back across the bridge and to the outdoor lockers facing the bay. The lockers were thirty feet from where Caleb and I had first found our bearings after hopping the outer wall. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint my locker. It was the only one leaking blood.

Caleb and I stood motionless in front of locker 81. I straddled the blossoming puddle in front of the locker as I lifted the light combination lock in my left hand. I turned the dial right to 7, left to 32, then right to 6. Unfortunately, the combination was 6-34-5. On the fourth attempt, I unlatched the lock and tossed it to Caleb. The wind was fierce and as I looked at Caleb one last time, he yelled, “What are you waiting for?”

I’m sorry, but I was little weary about finding the woman I’d fallen in love with just forty-eight hours prior in forty-eight pieces. I lifted the lock mechanism and eased the locker door open against the prevailing wind. My fingers slipped from the door and the locker slammed shut. I only saw the ravaged body for an instant—but there was no mistaking it—the body was that of Conner Ellis Dodds.