Investing in Murder

Three

ThreeGrand Cayman Island › Monday, December 1, 2008 › 09h10

Jimmy Chrysler and Samara Ohayashi (Sammy O) approached the qrcp discovery theater with thirty-seven years of combined experience in homicide investigation, separated by thirty-four years of maturity. A lone pathologist had her hands in the corpse, cutting ribs with a pneumatic grinder as Jimmy activated a pair of glass doors. He stepped into the white-ceramic-tiled autopsy room with Sammy in his shadow. The doors closed behind them with a swoosh, immediately sealing them in an atmosphere that turned up their noses: ammonia fumes and trace chemicals of death halted their advance. Jimmy pointed to the disposable mask dispenser and together they detoured toward it.

Jimmy held the papery mask against his face with fat fingers, his nose stretching its delicate fabric. When the grinding ceased, he said nasally, “Hello, Terry.”

Terry didn’t look up when she replied, “Jimmy. Sammy. I’m not finished with her yet.”

Jimmy was no stranger to the young woman, whose vocals were confident, whose words were sparse. “Sorry, Terry. Sammy couldn’t wait.”

Sammy secured the surgical mask over his small facial features without taking his eyes off the discovery table. He gawked with almond-shaped eyes at the decomposing corpse.

Molecules of invisible gas evaporated from the rotting tissue like the Texas heat on an asphalt two-lane. A silent exhaust fan in the ceiling filtered the fumes through a uv light and a carbon scrubber, venting them out into the atmosphere, where they would eventually mix with the scent of the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet down the street. Sammy asked, with morbid humor, “Where’s her face?”

Terry looked up. Her jade-green eyes appeared magnified behind a pair of clear goggles. Her scrub cap held most of her mahogany-blond hair in place. She ignored Sammy’s query and looked over at Jimmy. “The body is literally being held together by the rubber dive suit.”

Jimmy gave a nod. He glanced at the lead weights on the dive belt under the table. “Looks like a lot of weight for such a small woman.”

Terry shook her head. “Probably twice as much. If she hadn’t been hooked by the fishing trawler, she’d probably never have surfaced.” She set the grinder down and gripped the exposed ribcage.

“id?” said Sammy.

“It’s on the board . . . above the sink. We used her dental records to confirm.”

Sammy squinted. “Cynthia Nadia Delsol, a.k.a. Cincinnati. Age — forty-one. atd.” He turned back toward Terry. “What’s atd?”

“At Time of Death.”

“What was the time of death?” Jimmy asked.

Terry gripped the sternum. She yanked hard as she spoke. “I’m guessing, ugh . . . with the chemical compound data I have to work with — ” She paused. “Wow, they usually snap right off.”

“Terry!” Jimmy shouted. “What about the time of death?”

Terry picked up a towel, wiped her latex hands as she spoke. “Like I said . . . with the information I have to work with, I’m saying . . . six months.”

“Six months what?” Sammy asked.

Terry threw down the towel. “She’s been dead for six months.”

Sammy glanced at the floor.

“Is six months an accurate time of death?” Jimmy said.

Terry’s mask sucked into her face for a beat, then puffed out for a beat. “Well,” she said. “Based on the amount of decay and the rate of decom under those conditions, and the fact that she hasn’t been seen or heard from for six months, I’d say it’s accurate enough.”

“Cause of death?” Jimmy said.

“cod?” Sammy smirked.

Terry rolled her eyes. “The good lung was full of water. What’s left of the other has a suspicious tear in it, which correlates with a scrape on her rib.” She picked up the piece of rib, examining it closely.

Jimmy swallowed an imaginary lump in his throat. “Meaning?”

Terry set the bone down. “Meaning . . . she may have been stabbed.”

“Mmm.”

“There was no weapon,” Sammy said.

Terry smiled with her eyes. “Well, it’s possible it was a Dover dive knife.”

Sammy rubbed the back of his neck. “You can tell from a scratch on a dead woman’s ribcage?”

Terry sighed. “No, Rookie, from the Dover sheath strapped to her leg when they brought her in.”

Jimmy smiled under his mask.

“It’s in the evidence — ” She paused, as though a flash of insight locked her jaw. She eyed Jimmy narrowly. “Your boss . . . he asked to have it sent to his office.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows.

After standing in the death dirt of the discovery room, Jimmy and Sammy found comfort in their supervisor’s sterile office. They stared out over the pier from his fourth-floor window, sipping bad coffee, waiting for Sergeant Eric Stanford to return from lunch.

The pier had fewer than half its berths occupied — the very pier from which Cincinnati and her crew had disappeared six months earlier.

Jimmy said, “We won’t be going out to Dagger today, Sammy. Or tomorrow, by the look of it.”

Abnormally unstable weather had created rough seas and dark skies across most of the Caribbean. The forecast predicted more of the same for the next forty-eight hours.

Foaming waves smashed ceaselessly over the rock wall separating the boardwalk from the beach, conjuring a memory in Jimmy’s head. He’d scheduled a fishing trip back on the eighth of June — his birthday. The trip had been canceled due to rough seas and inclement weather. The retainer was non-refundable. The following day he’d argued over the phone with the agent about a refund, then he’d hoofed it down to the pier to speak with the boat’s pilot. He recalled seeing two guards with sidearms transferring what appeared to be cash bags and file boxes aboard a luxury motor yacht from a yellow security van. They’d been doing so the entire time he’d been on the pier.

Sammy interrupted Jimmy’s thoughts. “Something wrong?” he asked.

Jimmy held his Styrofoam cup up to the window and pointed to the end of the pier with his pinky finger. “Berth two. It’s been empty since her yacht disappeared.”

Sammy stared out at the vacant slip. “Yeah, it’s still registered in her name. The harbormaster said she’d paid for one year . . . in advance.”

“Mmm,” Jimmy hummed, visualizing the 143-foot Benetti Vision, Sea-no-Evil, exaggerating the prominence of the harbor on and off for almost a year before it went missing.

The local police had enlisted the help of the Royal Navy and the United States Coast Guard in trying to locate the yacht and its crew. During the initial interview with Jayson L. Riley, they’d concluded that the yacht departed George Town on the ninth of June and either went down in a storm or slipped into a foreign port under a new name and nationality. Rumors that Jayson had pirated the yacht eventually milled out as time passed and no evidence was found to substantiate the allegations.

“When did she pay?” Jimmy asked.

“What?”

“For the year. How long before she went missing did she pay for the slip?”

Sammy shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. He raised his cup to his mouth, took a sip, then asked, “Why?”

Jimmy stared out at the vacant slip. “If she’d planned to disappear, I doubt she would have paid for one year.” As his mind began piecing together a new theory, he removed a wad of chewing tobacco from under his lip, flicked it into his empty cup. “She was up to no good, Sammy.”

Sammy scrunched his face into a disgusted look. “Your opinion. Or you know something I don’t?”

Jimmy shrugged. “Gut feel,” he said. “Something a rookie wouldn’t understand.”

Sammy huffed. “You Englishmen are so arrogant.”

“Don’t take it personally, Rookie. You’re going to get old one day too.” He wiped his finger on the seat of his pants.

Sammy grinned. “Not as old as you, I hope.”

Jimmy let the comeback slide. He wasn’t as old as his iron-gray eyes and graying hair and loose skin suggested. He’d aged prematurely from his years at sea. First, during a stint in the British Navy, then as a marine detective for a Caribbean shipping company. Most of the aging process was gradual, save for the two weeks he’d spent searching for his wife and daughter after a Category 5 hurricane smashed their home in Puerto Rico in ’98. He’d buried them together before joining the Queen’s Royal Cayman Police and burying himself in a cold case file, which he’d solved in sixty-three days with help from divers from a local dive shop, who’d led an underwater search for a wealthy South African man. The killer, a Popeye for hire, had murdered the Afrikaner at Dagger Inlet before sailing the boat to Panama and selling it to Jimmy in an operation dubbed Gray Dawn.

They turned away from the window when a short wiry man entered the office, looking more like an office manager than a detective squad boss: white shirt with sleeves rolled up above his wrists, yellow bowtie, dungarees, suspenders. Only the holstered firearm in his shoulder-belt distinguished him. His enthusiasm was evident in his brisk walk and the tune he was whistling.

“Aye, men,” he said. “I’m all ears.” He swung himself into a leather swivel chair behind his desk, resting his elbows on a spotless blotter.

Jimmy glanced at Sammy and cracked a smile. The size of Stanford’s ears amused them. His head’s just small, Sammy would say. No way, they’re just damn big ears, Jimmy would counter.

Stanford waved his hand, gesturing them to have a seat. Neither accepted. Sammy remained by the window. Jimmy stepped to the edge of the boss’s desk and tossed his Styrofoam cup in the bin. “We’re taking over the investigation from the local police. It’s definitely a homicide.”

Sammy chimed in. “We don’t have much to go on, though. The initial report is vague as hell.”

Stanford dimpled his desk blotter with his elbows and wove his fingers together, twisting the Masonic ring on his left-hand ring finger. “That doesn’t surprise me. The Locals can’t even fill out a parking ticket.”

Jimmy smiled. “The only thing the report tells us is that she spent her last weekend on the island with Jayson L. Riley, from Chicago, her investment advisor. A few days later, ShipTrac filed the off-radar report.”

Sammy jumped back into the conversation. “Apparently they sailed to Dagger Inlet on June seventh, anchored, went diving . . . twice, returning the next evening. Riley and the divemaster were the only ones to disembark. The police tracked down the divemaster two months later, only to learn he’d been killed in a diving accident.”

Stanford brushed back his imaginary hair with the palm of his hand and combed his neatly trimmed goatee with his fingers. “Accident?”

“Exactly,” Sammy said. “The Locals didn’t question it. Case closed.”

Stanford snatched an hb from a stash of pencils he kept in a carving of a native fishing vessel on his desk. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve got much to go on,” he said, waving the pencil at Jimmy.

Jimmy followed the pencil’s movements through the air, like waiting for a fly to land, knowing by the end of the day, the yellow stick would be less than two inches long and the eraser worn down to a nub, and several pages of Stanford’s notepad would end up in the bin. It seemed admirable, attempting to write a crime novel. He wondered, however, if Stanford should have chosen a different hobby.

“What do we know about this Riley character?” Stanford said.

Jimmy shrugged, glanced at Sammy, then back to Stanford. “We spoke to his lawyer . . . Baker. A talkative bloke. Said they’d be coming down on business, so no issue with the interview. Said it was a waste of time, though. Like the initial interview with the Locals.”

Stanford huffed. “I think we’ll be the judge of that.”

“Well,” Jimmy went on, “it should be interesting. Lawyer said the guy’s known in the industry as an oxymoron. Some of his peers call him a winning loser. But secretly, according to the lawyer, they envy him.”

Stanford positioned the hb graphite on the sticky note with the concentration of a five-year-old learning to write. “Oxymoron? How do you spell that?”

Jimmy smiled. “Oxy . . . moron.”

Sammy placed a hand on his mouth. Looked away.

“Anyway,” Jimmy said, “guy’s a white-collar executive . . . investment advisor. Makes people rich, a life he inherited, but spends much of his time travelling, most of it to disaster-prone regions where he helps people: quote ‘prepare and repair.’ He’s registered with Interpol. No criminal record. High iq, apparently.”

“He did kill a guy once,” Sammy said, a touch of admiration in his voice.

Stanford raised his eyebrows, “What?”

“In the Philippines,” Jimmy said. “Apparently he was kidnapped. Few years back. He escaped, basically unharmed, but not before overpowering one of his abductors. Stabbed the guy in the guts. Military said it was justified. Said he should have killed all three before he fled to the jungle.”

“Mmm,” Stanford sounded. “He used a knife?”

Jimmy gave a nod. “Affirmative. Lawyer told us he’d been trained. Part of his upbringing. Like piano lessons, second languages, et cetera. Life of the rich and famous.”

Stanford sat back in his chair. It was apparent that his gears were grinding away on something. Whatever it was, he didn’t share it. “Okay,” he said, “anything else?”

Jimmy was about to mention the evidence Stanford had taken from the discovery room, the Dover sheath, but Sammy started talking and distracted him.

Sammy said, “I went to see Danny Leighton over at the Sentinel Investment Bank — ” He paused, looked at Stanford. “You know Danny, right? The guy with the eyes?”

Stanford rolled the hb between his thumb and forefinger, frowning. “Of course I do. Everyone knows him. He’s donated a lot of time and money to this community since he arrived.”

“Well . . . ,” Sammy, who’d come to know Danny over the past few months, said, “he told me Cincinnati had an investment account there. Its assets were frozen when she disappeared, but the moment her body was recovered, the funds were transferred out. A balance of three-point-two mil wired out yesterday, to the Alliance Bank in Chicago. To Jayson L. Riley.”