HER FINAL WORD (JACK RYDER Book 6) Read online

  "Ouch," Dylan said and winced.

  The girl was pulled out of her train of thought when the boy whimpered and felt his armpit where she had been scrubbing so hard it was turning red and blistering.

  48

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  "So, I have found all the tattoos and written them down," I said and showed Emily my notepad. "They're all words. Look."

  "We know that Nancy's was 'Joy,'" Emily said and came up behind me to look over my shoulder.

  "If we take them in the order they were killed, then we have Laurie Roberts. On her back was a tattoo with the word PLEASE. She was followed by Annie Turner who had the word PANIC on her back. And finally, we have Jill Cardigan who had the word CHURCH tattooed to her chest."

  "And Ella Maria?" Emily asked.

  I shook my head. "I haven't been able to find any pictures of hers, and it's not described anywhere in any reports. Maybe it was in a place where it was well hidden. We would need to see the body to find it, and that might be a little hard by now."

  "Okay, so we leave her out of it. For now. So far, we have the words Please, Panic, Church and finally, Joy," Emily said. "Those are all very odd words."

  "I know, and it would be easy just to conclude that they're random, but I think they must mean something," I said.

  "How come this wasn't a part of the investigation?" she asked. "How could they have missed this?"

  I shrugged and put my feet up on the chair next to me. "Maybe the police here didn't think it was significant. They might not even have mentioned it to the parents."

  "Or maybe they did, and the parents felt embarrassed that their daughters had a tattoo like that, maybe they thought that she had been hiding it from them and then just never said anything," she added.

  "I wonder if there's a connection between these words," I said pensively.

  "We can try and put them together in different orders to see if they create something, if the killer is sending us a message," Emily said.

  I did as she told me to and put the words in random order, then switched them around, but nothing seemed to make any sense. I rubbed my forehead and finished my coffee that had gone cold when my cell suddenly started to ring. I picked it up.

  It was Commissioner Maycock.

  "Great news!"

  "How so?" I asked, surprised to hear him so cheerful.

  "We have caught the killer."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Nancy Elkington's killer. We have him in custody. He was bragging to all his friends, telling them about the body in the swampy waters. That's how we found him."

  "Found who?" I asked, sensing this was going somewhere terrible.

  "The boy. You were right. He did exist. His name is Jamie Davis. He's a local boy."

  "You arrested the boy who found the body and then ran away?" I asked, almost unable to breathe.

  "Yes indeed. He confessed to everything."

  "Even to cutting her tongue out?" I asked.

  The commissioner went quiet for a second. "Well, yes, of course. Anyway, we are on our way to tell her parents. I should think they would be very happy. Case is closed. You're free to leave if you need to."

  "I…are you sure about this?" I asked, wondering how on earth this man could be so terribly blind.

  "Yes, yes. I have a signed confession."

  "And what about all the other killings? The boy can't be any more than fifteen, seventeen at the most."

  "What other killings?" the commissioner asked, then added a tsk. "Just be happy, will you? Case is closed. We can all sleep well now. Weather is good. Sun is shining. Go chill on the beach."

  I hung up, thinking that if he thought I was able to sleep well or even chill anywhere after he yet again had arrested an innocent for what this serial killer was doing, then he was fooling himself.

  I looked at Emily with a deep sigh.

  "Now what?" she asked.

  "I think I need to visit Juan Garcia in prison. After three years in jail, he might be willing finally to speak."

  49

  Bahamas, October 2018

  Coraline could hardly open her eyes. They were swollen and painful. She woke up lying on the tiles, still in the windowless room. Coraline sat up. She tasted blood in her mouth. She wiped her nose and realized she had a nosebleed. Coraline started to sob.

  How did she end up in this mess?

  You trusted the wrong guy. Meghan told you this would happen, didn't she? She warned you, but you wouldn't listen.

  Coraline thought about her friend. Would she know that she was missing by now? Coraline had the day off, so it wasn't like she would be missed at the club. She lived alone, so no one would miss her at home either. Would her mother maybe call? It wasn't very likely since she hadn't called Coraline much since she met her new husband, Greg.

  Greg was a software developer with his own company and hundreds of people working for him. He was a self-made man, who had worked so much in his younger years that now he had just sold his company and received almost a hundred million dollars for what he had spent the past ten years building. So now, he wanted to see the world, he had told Coraline's mother when they met through a dating app.

  "And I want a companion."

  It hadn't taken Coraline's mother many seconds to say yes, and now, that was all they did. Travel all over the world to exotic places, forgetting all about her daughter and everything else back home.

  It wasn't that Coraline didn't think her mother deserved this newfound happiness; she totally did. Her dad hadn't exactly treated her well in the divorce, and she had been miserable for many years. She had then turned to drinking and, soon after, Coraline had seen a side to her mother that she didn't care for much. That side was gone now, so that was the good news. The bad news was that Coraline missed her mother and now that she had gotten herself into some deep trouble, she needed her more than ever.

  "There has to be a way out," Coraline mumbled to herself as she got back on her feet. She tried to look through her beat up eyes, to search for an exit somewhere, but all she could see were walls and more walls. At the end of the room was a bathroom but that had no windows either.

  "If there's a way in, there's a way out," she reassured herself, walking into the bathroom and looking around. In the ceiling, she spotted a ventilation duct. Could she possibly open that and crawl up there?

  Coraline stared at it, then down at her body. She was short, but not exactly light. Over the past year, she had gained a lot of weight on her butt and thighs. Her arms weren't strong enough to pull her up. She'd have to find something she could stack, or maybe there was a chair that could help her reach?

  Coraline looked around inside the room again, then found one by the corner. It wasn't a very tall chair, more like a fancy recliner, one of those designer ones you only saw in magazines.

  Coraline grabbed it with her bruised hands, then pulled it, straining her back. She placed it directly underneath the duct and then stood on the chair. She reached her arms up toward the ceiling. Coraline breathed in excitement.

  If she stood on her tippy toes, she could touch the duct.

  50

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  Juan Garcia's brown eyes rested on me across the table. We were sitting in one of the barren rooms at the prison the next day. It was early in the afternoon, but in there, it might as well have been in the middle of the night. I wondered when Juan had last seen daylight or even felt the sun on his skin.

  I had just told him I didn't believe he killed those three women.

  Juan Garcia's brown eyes stared at me from a dirty face. I wondered from the smell of him if showers were even offered.

  "It doesn't matter."

  "I think it does," I said. "I’ve looked into all the three cases, and they bear too many similarities to two recent cases, which were committed after you were incarcerated. I think the killer is still out there and you were just used as a scapegoat, giving them someone to blame."

  Juan smile
d an almost toothless smile, then shook his head. "You're looking for justice? There is no such thing."

  "Yes, there is," I said. "If you help me."

  "How? How can I possibly help you? Look where I am."

  I leaned forward. "You signed a confession; why?"

  Juan shook his head and leaned back. "It was a very long time ago."

  "I have a feeling you still know why you did it," I said, "why you signed the papers."

  Juan looked down like he was ashamed and that was when it struck me.

  "You can't read, can you? You didn't know what you were signing?"

  Juan lifted his eyes, and they met mine. He didn't have to answer. The look in those eyes was more than enough. I felt my heart rate rise as the anger settled inside of me. This man had been wrongfully imprisoned for three years just because he couldn't read what he was signing.

  "I was illegal," he added. "Came from Ecuador. I traveled through Columbia, where I paid all I owned to be put on a boat and promised to reach America. But I ended up here. It is many years ago now. They gave me a job, food to eat, and a roof over my head. But I never learned to read."

  "You were a gardener, right?" I asked.

  Juan's face lit up. "Yes."

  "At Lyford Cay, right?"

  He nodded eagerly like the memories of the great outdoors made him forget where he was for just a few seconds.

  "Who did you work for?"

  Juan smiled. "The White Lady."

  "The White Lady?"

  He nodded with a shiver. "That's what we called her. She told us we didn't need to know her name. To us, she was either ma'am or simply Mrs. When she wasn't listening, we just called her The White Lady because she always wore those white dresses and scarves on her head. Scary woman."

  "I take it she didn't treat you well?" I asked.

  Juan scoffed for an answer when a thought struck me.

  "Did she tell you to sign those papers?" I asked, leaning forward again. "Was she the one who told you to do it?"

  Juan spat on the floor, then looked up at me, fire in his usually so-gentle brown eyes. Once again, he didn't have actually to say the words for me to understand.

  51

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  When I returned to the hotel, it was crawling with police. Six police cars were parked outside, and my heart immediately dropped. My first thought was that something had happened to Emily.

  I parked and rushed into the lobby, where Commissioner Maycock was standing, flirting with the receptionist. When he saw me, he straightened up and forgot about her.

  "Detective," he said and approached me.

  "What's going on?" I asked, still frightened half to death. "Has something happened?"

  Maycock became serious, then nodded. "I am afraid so."

  Oh, dear God!

  "There has been another one," he said.

  "Another one?" I asked, still thinking it was about Emily.

  "Another girl gone missing," Maycock said, pulling me aside so the receptionist wouldn't listen in on our conversation. "American."

  Relieved that it had nothing to do with Emily, I exhaled, but then the seriousness of the situation sunk in, and I looked at the man in front of me. For the first time, I sensed he too was feeling helpless.

  "We need your assistance, Detective," he said. "We want this to stop."

  I nodded pensively. "I will help you, but I have a couple of conditions."

  Maycock nodded. "Anything."

  "First of all, you let the boy go. Jamie Davis had nothing to do with the murder of Nancy Elkington. He's nothing but a young boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's still just a suspect, so it should be easy to simply let him go home."

  Maycock thought about it for a few seconds.

  "I'll deal with the Elkingtons," I added, knowing that was probably his biggest concern. He liked being able to tell the relatives that he had solved the case. It was less fun to have to tell them he was wrong.

  "Okay," Maycock said.

  "Good. Also, I need access to all your files, autopsy reports, toxicology reports, medical examiner's reports, and so on. Everything you have. No questions asked."

  "Naturally."

  "Good. Now, the thing is, I have very good reason to believe there is a connection between the killings of Nancy Elkington and Ella Maria Chauncey and the three girls that the gardener Juan Garcia is in prison for murdering. I can't prove anything yet, but I want to work on this theory. You have a serial killer on the loose, and I believe that killer is connected to Lyford Cay."

  I waited for Maycock's reaction before continuing. I knew the neighborhood was a no-go in his world; it was untouchable, but I was determined to change that.

  "What I need is full access," I said. "To the neighborhood. I need to be able to come and go as I please. No more lists. No more alerting people before I arrive. I drive up to the gate, and they let me in without questions."

  Maycock looked like I had told him I wanted to marry his daughter and take her to the moon.

  "Now…that is…"

  "Those are my terms," I said. "They are not negotiable. I am the one with experience in catching serial killers, and this is the way I can do it. This guy is accelerating right now; he's on a killing spree, and we need to stop him."

  "But…Lyford Cay?"

  I nodded. "Yes, Lyford Cay. Full access. Whenever I want."

  The commissioner swallowed and looked at me with wide eyes, sweat springing from his upper lip.

  "All right. But we keep this between you and me. No one else can know we're looking at a serial killer. It's bad for tourism."

  I chuckled, then placed a hand on the man's broad shoulder.

  "You've got that part right. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get my daughter. We have a killer to catch."

  Part IV

  52

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  They sent over a guy with all the information on the girl who had gone missing, and I read through the missing person's report with Emily.

  "Her name is Coraline Stuart, age nineteen," I said. "Picture fits the profile. Blonde and American. Worked as a waitress at Lyford Cay Clubhouse, where she was last seen two nights ago as she was getting dressed for a date. Her co-worker, Meghan, saw her in the dressing room and spoke to her."

  "Again, we're back to that place," Emily said. "Everything seems to circle around that neighborhood."

  "Sure does," I said.

  "Who reported the girl missing?"

  "Her mother sprang a surprise visit on her two nights ago, flying in with her millionaire husband. They hadn't seen each other for a year, and the mother thought it was about time. She tried to call her once she landed at Nassau Airport, then grabbed a taxi to her apartment, where she found she wasn't home. The mother then called the friend, Meghan, and she told her that Coraline was going on a date with a guy. So, the mother found the spare key that her daughter always kept under the mat outside because she always forgot her keys, so she let herself in. When the daughter didn't come home all night, she grew worried. She tried calling her again and again all day long, and someone did pick up suddenly. But it wasn't her daughter on the other end; it was another worker at the clubhouse who had found her phone in the trash can. He also found Coraline's purse in there, and that was when the mother became worried. She went to the police and filed a report."

  I looked up. "And since they’ve just had another girl go missing and turn up dead, they took it very seriously, which is good. Usually, they would have told her to wait and see if the girl showed up on her own."

  "So, the Royal Bahamian Police Force did some good police work for once," Emily said.

  "I should say so," I said, "and it will be to our advantage. The earlier we react, the faster we can find her, hopefully still alive."

  "I can't stop thinking about the guy she was dating," Emily said. "It's been a theme in several of the cases, hasn't it? That she was meeting up with someone on the n
ight she disappeared?"

  I nodded. "Yes. Except Nancy. We don't know if she met up with someone maybe secretly or met her killer randomly. And Ella was with Henry."

  "True. Oh, wait, I forgot…there was another thing," Emily said. "I noticed it when you were gone, and I read through the reports. Annie Turner was last seen with Mr. Sakislov and his friends, right?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Well, I read through Jill Carrigan's report."

  "The one who met someone at a bar and went home with him? But her friends were too drunk to be able to ID him?"

  "Yes, there was one witness at the bar who said she saw them leave in a Rolls Royce. She said she remembered it well because that is a very rare car around here."

  I nodded, thinking I had always dreamt of driving one of those.

  "Okay, and?"

  "Well, I looked it up, and guess who owns a Rolls Royce like that…?"

  I looked at her, not very surprised.

  "Sakislov?"

  "Bingo."

  53

  Bahamas, May 1984

  "You're hurting me."

  Dylan squirmed and pulled away from the girl. She stared at his armpit where she had been scrubbing and at the blood oozing from the small blisters and scratches. His big eyes stared at her, and as she looked into them, they reminded her of his mother. Again, she saw that face who had beaten her with the grater until she fainted, who had beaten Carla, and who had killed Gabrielle. Again, she heard that scraping sound of Gabrielle's nails against the metal door. And again, she noticed the metallic taste of anger in her mouth. Everything about him disgusted her.

  "You filthy animal!" he yelled.

  The girl stared at the boy, so pale, so fragile, with most of his body sunk into the water. She felt such hatred at that moment, such deep anger, she grabbed him and pressed his head down. Her hand pressed harder, and the boy slid under the surface of the water. His body squirmed, his arms and legs flailing as he fought underneath the surface. She held him down, pressed his head under the water and made it stay there, being older and much bigger than he was. Dylan's eyes looked back up at her as she held him down.