Bluewater Killer: A Serial Murder Mystery Set In Florida and the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  Bluewater Killer

  By C.L.R. Dougherty

  Copyright © 2011

  Charles L. R. Dougherty

  All rights reserved

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  Table of Contents

  Bluewater Killer

  Windward and Leeward Islands

  St. Vincent to Union Island

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Read a preview of Bluewater Vengeance, the next book in the series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Bluewater Vengeance is available from the Kindle Store:

  A Note to the Reader

  About C.L.R. Dougherty

  Other Books by C.L.R. Dougherty

  Windward and Leeward Islands

  St. Vincent to Union Island

  Prologue

  The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the sea surface was lit by that lingering glow that fades to darkness so quickly in the tropics. The man on watch in the wheelhouse caught a glimpse of safety yellow among the waves a few hundred yards off the bow, and then darkness fell. A strobe light caught his eye as the scrap of yellow faded from view. He called to one of the off-watch crewmen to go up to the bow as a lookout while he altered course slightly, wondering what they would find.

  He throttled the big diesel down and disengaged the transmission, allowing the ship to coast, losing speed as they approached the strobe. As they closed on the flashing light, he went to full power astern for a moment to stop them, and the man on the bow turned on a powerful handheld spotlight. Drifting now, they were about 50 yards from the strobe, and he climbed down out of the wheelhouse and joined the man on the bow. In the beam of the spotlight, they could make out a person floating in a bright yellow life vest with the strobe light attached.

  The waves blocked their view every few seconds; it was rough, and the man who had been steering didn't think he could maneuver the ship well enough to retrieve the person. It's strange that he's not waving, the man thought, wondering if they were about to pick up a dead body. He went back to the wheelhouse, to the little cabin where the captain was asleep, and woke him. The captain took the controls and put the ship close alongside the person. He stopped the ship just upwind of the person, so that as the ship drifted sideways, it blocked the wind and waves as the pilot ladder drew abreast of their target. One of the men, hanging on the last rungs of the ladder, snagged the lifejacket with a boat hook, and they brought the person aboard.

  Chapter 1

  He drifted into consciousness, fighting it the whole way. The harsh light of the sun burned through his eyelids. He clamped them closed, in hopes that he would drift off again. "Where am I?" No one answered, but his instincts told him that it was nowhere good. As he raised a hand to his throbbing head, he became aware of the corrosive vapors of jackiron rum wafting from his shirt. Had he been drinking? He couldn't believe that; he wasn't a drinker, but he felt hung over. Moving his hand to the floor, he felt the surface beneath him -- hard, lumpy, and damp. "Cobblestones?" He forced his eyes open, a little bit at a time. His surroundings rolled past in surreal swirls. His instincts were right. He was nowhere good, and nowhere familiar, either. Sunlight beamed from a hole, high up in one of the walls. He turned his head, trying to look the other way, but instantly regretted the effects of the motion. Overcome by nausea and retching painfully, he rolled onto his side to avoid choking. As the waves of nausea receded, he took in the uneven stone floor stretching from his cheek to the iron bars comprising the wall opposite the one with the hole in it. "Bars?" He must be in a cell. "Where am I?" he asked again. Still, no one answered his questions.

  Ignoring his body's protests, he forced himself to a sitting position. He sat there for a moment, waiting for his surroundings to stop their circular motion. He looked around and saw that he was alone; his immediate surroundings were deathly quiet. In the distance, he could hear voices, raised in gospel song. There was a subtle but still noticeable calypso undertone to the familiar music. As he registered the rhythm, the notion that he was in the islands formed in his mind. "I'm hung over and in jail, somewhere in the Caribbean," he said aloud. "It's Sunday. I need water and food." Behind that raging thirst, he could feel his stomach growling.

  He crawled over to the bars and pulled himself to a semi-erect position, holding on to stay upright as his vision swirled again. "Got to be careful about moving my head so fast," he said, under his breath. He looked out into a dim, rough-walled corridor, broken pieces of oyster shell visible in the construction. "Definitely in the islands," he said.

  "Hello," he called. "Anybody there?" He listened as the sound of his voice died in soft echoes. Still grasping the vertical bars of his cell door, he shook it to make a noise and get someone's attention. To his surprise, the door swung out into the corridor with a loud screech of rusty iron hinges. He stumbled, shuffling to stay on his feet, as he followed the arc of the swinging door. He paused, hanging on the door to regain his equilibrium. After a few seconds of silence, he released his grip on the door and moved a little way into the corridor, taking in the empty cells to either side of his.

  "Hey!" he yelled, rewarded by an increase in the throbbing pressure behind his forehead. No one answered. Leaning on the wall, he worked his way down the corridor toward what appeared to be an exit. Reaching the end of the corridor, he peered through a narrow archway into a sort of waiting room. It was dirty but neat, in that way unique to official spaces in small Caribbean countries. There was a bench along one wall; along the opposite wall, there was a counter, with a window of scarred, yellowed Plexiglas, like the ticket booth at a defunct theater. There was nobody behind the window. He stumbled out into the empty waiting room. Examining the room for a moment, he shook his sore head in confusion. Still unsure of his footing, he stepped outside into the morning sunlight, expecting to encounter a policeman at any moment. He was a little worried about how he would explain his accidental freedom if anybody challenged him. As he staggered out of the door, he looked up and back over his shoulder, noticing the signboard hanging above the portal. "Police," he read.

  He recognized his surroundings, now. He was in Bequia, a delightful little island just south of the main island of Saint Vincent. It must indeed be church time on Sunday morning, because the stree
ts were deserted and music poured forth from every house of worship. His grasp of his situation increasing as he integrated this new information, he recalled that he was here on his sailboat, or "yacht," as the islanders referred to such craft. He made his way to the town dock, remembering as he walked with uncertain steps that he should find his dinghy tied up there. "I'd better get back to the boat and get myself out of town. No telling what I've gotten myself into," he said.

  There were several rigid inflatable dinghies tied at the end of the dock, including his own. He had painted the name of the mother ship, Sea Serpent, in 3-inch high letters on both sides when he bought it. The dinghy was locked to the dock with a heavy cable and a padlock. He fumbled in his pockets. Empty. No keys, no wallet, either. That didn't surprise him; if he had stuff in his pockets the police probably took it unless somebody beat them to it. Normally, though, he knew he would only have been carrying a little local currency and his keys, leaving everything else locked safely away aboard Sea Serpent.

  He scrounged around the foot of the town dock, looking for something that he could use to liberate the dinghy. Picking up two almost-intact bricks, he carried them out to the end of the dock. He put one brick down on the dock and pulled on the cable holding the dinghy. Gaining some slack, he twisted a kink into the cable, positioning the kink on top of the brick. After smashing the kinked cable repeatedly with the other brick for a few minutes, he succeeded in breaking the cable. He dropped the bricks in the dinghy, climbed in, and fired up the outboard. His head was clearing now, thanks to the adrenalin and the activity, and he was aching with his need for water and food. Looking out to the west, he spotted Sea Serpent, swinging to her anchor, out near the harbor entrance. He brought the dinghy alongside her and shut off the outboard. He set the bricks up on the side deck.

  He found the companionway locked, as he had expected it to be, but a few quick blows with one of the bricks solved that problem. He dropped the bricks over the side. "At least nobody bothered the boat while I was ashore," he said. He went down the companionway ladder and rummaged in the refrigerator, finding a bottle of cold water. He swigged it down, feeling it soak into the dry tissues of his mouth and throat. He got a pot of coffee and a pan of scrambled eggs going on the galley stove.

  His physical condition improving, he checked in the chart table to find that his wallet, passport, and ship's papers were where he always left them. He scanned the papers, discovering that he left Saint George's, Grenada, on Wednesday, October 19, and had not yet cleared into Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A glance at the digital wristwatch hanging by its strap above the chart table confirmed that it was indeed 10:30 in the morning on Sunday, October 23.

  According to the clearance documents from Grenada, he had been bound for Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia. He probably spent Wednesday night at an out of the way anchorage somewhere along the way and got into Bequia the next night, most likely after Customs and Immigration had closed for the day. That would have put him in Bequia on Thursday night, but now it was Sunday. He frowned.

  Puzzling over the missing time made his already painful headache worse, but he forced himself to think through his probable itinerary. He couldn't account for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. The papers from the chart table provided no record of his having cleared into Bequia, which he would normally have done the morning after an evening arrival. Maybe he got here last night. He shook his head, dismayed at the gap in his memory. His eyes fell upon the ship's log, sitting on the tabletop in front of him. He opened it to the last entry; he had anchored in Petite Martinique late in the afternoon on October 19. There were no more recent entries in the log. He found that strange, as he was meticulous about records.

  There was no official record of his arrival, unless he had lost his copy of the clearance paperwork. He checked his passport for an entry stamp, but there was none. He always asked the immigration officer in Bequia to stamp his passport, even though they didn't routinely do so, because he liked clean records. His whole life, he had carried this legacy of parental control -- all rules must be obeyed. Since he had not been carrying any identification, the police wouldn't have known who he was. They didn't even lock his cell; he couldn't have been in much trouble. He wanted to know how he had come to spend the night in jail, but he had no idea how to find out without risking being re-incarcerated. His better judgment overcame his curiosity, and he decided to hoist the dinghy aboard and set sail for Saint Lucia.

  His decision made, a hasty departure seemed appropriate. As he leaned down into the cockpit to start the diesel, he noticed splattered blood all around the drains. Had he recently caught a tuna? He couldn't remember. Tuna often bled a bit, but his habit was to wash it up right away, before the blood stained the teak. His parents again. Cleanliness and order were deeply ingrained in his psyche. Puzzled, he grabbed the windlass control from the cockpit locker and went forward to raise the anchor. When he plugged the control into the socket on the foredeck, he noticed more bloodstains, all over the teak decking forward of the coach roof. Fish wouldn't explain that.

  "What happened here? Looks like somebody butchered a hog up here," he said. "How the hell would I know?" he asked. Sometimes he gave voice to both sides of a conversation; sometimes it was more like thinking aloud.

  He shrugged off his confusion and raised the anchor, lashing it securely in its chocks, ready for sea. As Sea Serpent drifted toward the mouth of the harbor, he uncovered the mainsail and laid the jib out on the foredeck, ready to hoist. Out of the lee of the land, the breeze began to fill in, and he raised both sails. While he clambered back to the cockpit, the breeze blew the bow off to port and the sails began to flog on the starboard tack. He sheeted them in for a close reach, heading for the west side of Saint Vincent, and shut down the diesel.

  As Sea Serpent worked her way out into the open water beyond the shelter of Bequia Head, the wind built to a steady 20 knots from the east. He trimmed the sails and set the wind-vane steering, planning to go below and take a quick shower. He had gotten a late start out of Bequia, so there was not likely to be any traffic. All the other sailors were well away, and it was the wrong time of day for the ferries and the inter-island freighters. He turned on the radar, set a two-mile guard band to warn him of other vessels coming too close, and went below.

  Chapter 2

  Stripping off his filthy clothes as he entered the head, he was taken aback to find feminine undergarments hung out to dry on the towel bar. On the counter, he saw a woman's shower bag with a few typical toiletries in addition to a comb, a brush, a safety razor, and a toothbrush. "Where did those come from?" he asked. Nobody else was aboard -- at 40 feet overall, Sea Serpent didn't have anywhere for a stowaway to hide. The undergarments were dry, so he put them on the berth just forward of the head along with the shower bag and cleaned himself up. Shaved, showered, teeth brushed; he felt human again. About the time he finished, he sensed from the change in Sea Serpent's motion that she was completely into the Bequia Channel. Back up in the cockpit, he did a quick 360-degree scan of the horizon. No other vessels were in sight, and it was a beautiful, clear day. Sea Serpent rolled along at her seven-knot hull speed under perfect sailing conditions.

  He climbed back down the companionway into the main cabin and took a quick look around, trying to figure out where the woman's clothes came from. In one of the lockers above the starboard settee, he found an unfamiliar duffel bag. He normally kept that storage space clear for use by the occasional guest, but he couldn't remember having any company. He put the duffel bag down on the settee to open it and noticed an Air France baggage tag on one of the handles. The flight was from Charles de Gaulle to Antigua several months ago. "That doesn't tell me much," he said. He unzipped the bag to find a typical sailor's stash: well-worn foul weather gear, a good, sharp rigging knife on a lanyard, a couple of pairs of clean cut-off jeans, one pair of clean but well-worn full length jeans, half-a-dozen cheap, souvenir T-shirts, two string bikinis, and a pair of beat-up sea-boots stuffed with several pairs o
f rolled-up woolen socks. This woman was a seasoned sailor, not a tourist.

  Feeling around the sides of the bag, he found a zippered pouch, which held a wallet, a French passport, and a dog-eared spiral notebook. He opened the passport and discovered that it belonged to Danielle Marie Berger, born in Paris on October 30, 1985. Even in a typical passport mug shot, she was a looker, a little French pixie with short, curly blond hair and an impish smile. "You're cute. Where'd you go, anyhow?" he asked. The wallet contained a crisp 100 euro note, and a few hundred Eastern Caribbean dollars in crumpled, smudged small-denomination bills. There were no credit cards, although there was an ATM card for a French bank, explaining how she got cash in the islands. He noticed a wrinkled, faded ATM receipt from the RBTT bank in Bequia. He found a French driver's license in the clear plastic window of the wallet, to match the passport. There were no photos of family or friends, and none of the other miscellaneous items that he carried in his own wallet.

  "Danielle travels light," he said, opening the spiral notebook to discover that it was about one-third filled with notes in a neat hand. "I can't read much French, so it's not too helpful, Danielle," he said. On the last page of script, he noticed the date, 20 October 2010, underlined. Following that, he read Sea Serpent, Mike Reilly, Mayreau, SVG. "That's my boat, and my name," he said. Mayreau is a small island about five miles north of Petite Martinique. He often stopped there for a night or two between Grenada and Bequia. Working backwards through the notebook, it appeared that she had been crew on the British yacht, Rambling Gal, for almost a year. Several of the stamps in her passport also listed Rambling Gal. "My head hurts," he said, mumbling, as he heard the sails beginning to flutter. He zipped up the sea bag, stowed it back in the locker, and scrambled topside to mind his ship.

  Chapter 3