Shimmer (2 page)

Fruits of evil just around the corner.

The crime scene team had beaten them to it, were already busy around the rowboat inside the cordoned off area.

Peterson had known these two detectives for a long while, knew how tight the bond was between Becket, the tall, rangy African-American and Martinez, the shorter, much slighter but, on occasions, tougher Cuban-American.

‘There was a length of tow rope tied to the bow which looks hacked off,' the patrolman went on. ‘Mr Myerson said soon as he saw the victim, he wanted to get the hell away, but he knew he'd never forgive himself if the boat drifted out too far or maybe capsized.'

‘Poor guy.' Sam looked towards the rowboat, then out to sea.

‘More guts than most,' said Peterson.

‘A prince,' said Martinez, who seldom took anything or anyone at face value. ‘Where is he?'

Peterson turned and indicated his partner, presently standing over a figure hunched on the sand about thirty yards away. ‘He has some scrapes on his arms from dragging the boat.'

‘Are we sure that's what caused them?' asked Sam.

‘Doc Sanders seems to think so,' the officer said. ‘He took some swabs, dressed the scrapes. No stitches needed.' He paused. ‘Nothing that looks like he might have been in a fight, nothing like that.'

‘He knows he's going to have to talk to us?' Sam checked.

It was a kind of lottery in the Violent Crimes department as to who got named lead investigator in any new case, and Sam had been handed this one by Sergeant Alvarez, which mostly meant that back in the office he'd be the one burdened with the report writing and lion's share of the paperwork. With so many years of informal partnership between them, neither Sam nor Martinez made any big leadership distinctions while they were out in the field.

‘Yes, sir,' Peterson answered Sam's question. ‘He said he didn't mind waiting, said he can't see himself getting down to work any time soon.'

Another figure in shirtsleeves, familiar, overweight but not lumbering, was moving over the sand towards the detectives, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape. Dr Elliot Sanders, the medical examiner, slipping a surgical mask down from his nose and mouth, lighting up a cigarette as he came close.

Nicotine – and good whisky, off-duty – always a priority with Sanders.

‘Bad one,' he said right away, his round, expressive face and keen eyes displaying grim distaste.

‘Is there any other kind?' Sam said.

The ME shrugged. ‘Asian male,' he said. ‘Indian, maybe. Early twenties, though it's a little hard to be sure of much.' He glanced at Sam, who covered well on the whole, but tended towards a queasy response to the remains of violent death. ‘The guy was strangled, but he's a real mess.' He fished in his pocket, brought out two more masks, handed them over. ‘Just in case.'

‘Of what?' asked Sam.

‘Some kind of chemical involved.' Sanders took a pull on his cigarette, stubbed it out on the sand, then picked up the butt and dropped it in his trouser pocket. ‘Body's almost certainly been washed, maybe hosed down or sluiced off in the ocean, but there's still quite an odour, so as I said, just in case.'

They donned gloves and shoe covers and walked together, all stepping carefully over the sand, even though they already knew that this area of beach was unlikely to have been the scene of the actual killing.

‘Holy fuck,' Martinez said, catching first sight of the victim.

‘What the hell happened to him?' Sam had to force himself to keep looking.

The victim was naked, all the visible skin from his face down to his feet striated in raw, bloody, almost burned-looking lines, some diagonal, others vertical, a few criss-crossing. Anything that might have helped ID him was gone; he wore no watch, no rings – a band of paler skin around his wrist spoke of a medium-size round-faced watch, but there was no such mark on his wedding band finger or any other, so he was perhaps unmarried, and though his hands, like the rest of him, were wounded, his nails were well kept.

The detectives could smell it too. Not intense, but evident nevertheless, like a mix of salt water and the chemical that Sanders had mentioned.

‘Smells like Clorox,' Martinez said.

‘Could be,' Sanders agreed. ‘But it might be something more corrosive.'

Sam was crouching now, the mask over his nose and mouth, staring down at the strange lines of wounds, observing that while some looked straight and almost systematic, others were more jagged, more random looking, more crazed.

‘They use some kind of rake?' he asked.

‘Possibly,' the ME said. ‘Though my first guess would be something more like a scrubbing brush, heavy duty, maybe even wire. More later.'

‘But this didn't happen here,' Sam said.

‘Certainly not here,' Sanders confirmed, ‘nor in the boat, I'd say.'

‘And I guess you can't say when,' Sam said.

These were things he wished he'd never learned. About the many complications involved in the estimating of time of death, about the variables that influenced rigor mortis and body cooling, and Sam, to his regret, did not need the ME to tell him that he would not be using a thermometer until he'd been able to examine the victim for evidence of sexual interference; and that in any case, body temperature was likely to mislead in a case like this, where the body had been moved after death, possibly dunked in the ocean before being placed in a new location – namely the rowboat – then left for an unknown length of time to the mercy of the elements.

‘You guess right,' Sanders said. ‘It'll be a while.'

‘You believe Myerson's story, Doc?' Martinez asked.

‘Innocent bystander, if I'm any judge,' Sanders said. ‘Shocked, a little excited, maybe. Not a suspect.'

Sam and Martinez both figured the ME for a pretty good judge.

The interior of the boat was grimy, with no visible traces of blood or bleach or any other chemical, which was bad news on one hand, indicating an absence of evidence, but at least it also meant no spillage or contamination problems – at least not here on South Beach, so no apparent reason to keep the beach closed once the crime scene team were through.

Sam was eyeing the victim's neck. ‘Some kind of ligature?'

‘Uh-huh,' Sanders said. ‘Some fibres there, look like cotton. The killer probably came at him from behind.'

‘And all this . . .' Sam scanned the dead man's other wounds. ‘Before or after death, would you say?'

‘After,' Sanders replied. ‘Almost certainly.'

‘Small fucking mercy,' said Al Martinez.

2

Except for Joshua, her nine-month-old baby son, and Woody – the wire-haired dachshund-miniature schnauzer cross she and Sam had rescued almost four years ago – Grace Lucca Becket was home alone on the West Island in the Town of Bay Harbor Islands, when the doorbell chimed just after nine a.m.

She came out of the nursery as the dog began barking and went to the hall window that gave the best vantage point over the front door step.

Claudia Brownley, standing on the path down below, wearing a blue denim trouser suit, the jacket slung over one arm, two travel bags on the ground behind her, looked up and waved.

‘I don't believe it!'

With a cry of startled delight, Grace ran down the stairs and flung open the door and her arms, and her sister stepped into her embrace, leaning against her, while Woody did his best to clamber up Claudia's legs.

‘Woody, get down.' Grace drew back and regarded the bags on the path, which were much too large for a weekend visit, even an extended one. ‘Sis, what's going on?'

Claudia lived with her husband Daniel Brownley and their two sons, Mike and Robbie, thousands of miles away, on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, a ferry ride from Seattle. It was not her habit, neither was it practical, to show up unexpectedly on her sister and brother-in-law's doorstep.

‘Don't I get to come in?' Claudia asked.

‘Oh, God, of
course
, come in.' Grace seized her in another swift, warm embrace, then picked up one of the bags while her sister heaved up the other, and they came inside together, dumped the bags in the narrow hallway and headed straight for the kitchen.

It was the heart of this small house and always had been, even before Sam had entered Grace's life, before they had married and adopted their daughter Cathy, long before they'd had their son.

‘So,' Claudia said, staying in the doorway, ‘where's my nephew?'

‘Sleeping,' Grace said. ‘I hope.'

In a perfectly run world, she supposed, her son ought to be awake, but for the past several nights he had been waking at erratic times, and his thirty-eight-year-old mom and forty-one-year-old dad were both feeling the strain.

‘Can I just look at him?' Claudia begged.

‘I want to look at you first,' Grace said.

‘I'd rather you didn't,' Claudia said. ‘I look lousy.'

‘You look beautiful,' Grace said, which was true, except that she'd also instantly observed that her sister had lost several pounds and gained some lines around her brown eyes. ‘I'm the wreck,' she added, pointing to her own hastily pulled on chinos and sleeveless white blouse.

There were few physical similarities between these two sisters. Grace had inherited their late mother Ellen's Scandinavian colouring, and Claudia had Frank Lucca's dark hair and eyes and pale olive skin – those outward details mercifully her only obvious genetic legacy from their father, she and Grace had long since agreed.

‘Come on.' Grace gave in, took Claudia's hand and drew her up the stairs and into the nursery, a small, charming room decorated in pale blues and piled with soft toys.

‘Oh, Grace,' Claudia whispered. ‘He just gets more wonderful.'

Which Joshua Jude Becket undeniably did, this baby boy whose cheeks were the colour of cappuccino, dimpling whenever he smiled; who had been born in the midst of mayhem and tragedy, but who was now, thankfully, a sturdy, healthy bundle of frequently lusty and inquisitive contentment.

His aunt stroked his dark hair, her touch delicate. ‘I won't wake him.'

‘Just for a little while longer,' Grace whispered back, gratefully. ‘Which will give us a chance to be just us.' She laid an arm around her sister's narrow shoulders. ‘I can't believe you're here.'

She was experiencing, if truth were told, somewhat mixed feelings about the suddenness of Claudia's arrival. Without question she felt a most overwhelming sense of gladness at having her sister here with her again – but she knew too that she might, if asked in advance, have hesitated momentarily because she was in the throes of organizing her return to work, with all its complications, and all that following a period of minor post-natal depression.

‘Plus a little post-traumatic stress,' her father-in-law had diagnosed some months back.

Dr David Becket was Sam's adoptive dad, a sixty-three-year-old Caucasian Jew who measured, these days, no more than five-nine (‘shrinking all the time,' he claimed), but whose six-foot-three son still looked up to and trusted him above all men in the world. A man of wisdom and humour and great kindness, and infinitely more of a father to Grace than her own had ever been. And even if he was a paediatrician, not a psychiatrist, and on the brink of full retirement, David Becket was still the medic Grace would most listen to even if she'd had the chiefs of Mount Sinai
and
Jackson Memorial on hand to advise her.

‘You're entitled,' he'd told her when she'd first confessed her sense of inadequacy to him. ‘And you're not alone,' he'd added. ‘It's hard to be joyful or even optimistic when two young people in your family are grieving.'

Yet still she'd felt shame for feeling bleak and not completely in control at exactly the time when she ought to have been filled with gratitude and competence. Even if she, more than most – being a psychologist herself, albeit a practitioner of child and adolescent psychology – knew better than that.
Ought
to know better.

Different when it was the shrink suffering the blues.

She had mixed feelings now, too, for an entirely separate reason. Because for months now she'd been worrying about Claudia, knowing that all was not as it should be with her, had even, a few times, decided it was high time she packed up Joshua and flew to Seattle with him – and Sam would have backed her up, no question, but each time she'd thought about it, Grace had found reasons not to go. And now here Claudia was, without so much as a warning call, with two large bags. And, more to the point, a husband and two sons back home.

Something was very wrong.

3

The investigation was underway.

The rowboat and victim having been photographed and checked over as thoroughly as possible in situ, the body – still in the boat – had been covered and removed from the scene, and was on its way to the medical examiner's office, where every fraction of an inch of the small vessel would be examined for evidence – after which Sanders would begin his painstaking work on the deceased himself.

The skills of the ME and his team were their best chance for a swift resolution in this case, Becket and Martinez were well aware, with no true crime scene to pore over. Any trace evidence turned up by the officers and technicians on the beach would almost certainly be either totally unconnected with the crime, or might be linked to Joe Myerson, the man without whom – as Sam had told him earlier – it was possible the crime might never have been discovered.

‘I guess he'd have washed up someplace,' Myerson had said.