Skull Wave (A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Book 5) Read online

  As he did this, he noticed the yellow pad, which had been about half full last night, was crowded with a page full of new notes now. Troy craned his neck, trying to see what the chief had written there.

  “Ah-yup,” Sam said noticing Troy’s gaze. “We’ve had quite a few developments in the case since I saw you last. Quite a few.”

  “Do you know who killed the girls?”

  “Not yet, but I do know one thing. It wasn’t you.”

  Troy relaxed and sat back in the chair.

  “For one thing, we found Kimberly’s phone at that old dive up on the pier,” he looked down at his pad as he spoke. “Fish…Heads. Or something like that.”

  Troy opened his mouth to say he didn’t know what that had to do with anything when a hazy memory began to come into focus in his head. Drinks with the girls, bunch of selfies, too many shots…yes, they had been there.

  “I reckon we did go there.” Troy leaned forward.

  “Then why the hell didn’t you mention that yesterday?”

  “I told you I didn’t remember it. I’ll be danged if I remember much of it now.”

  Sam studied Troy.

  “I had to go back out to visit her mama.” He took a deep breath. “She’s still hysterical over the whole deal and wants me to hang you.”

  Troy swallowed a lump in his throat.

  “Chief, I didn’t have anything to do with this, ya gotta believe me.”

  “I do believe you. But if you hold out information like this in the future, I’m gonna arrest you for obstruction, you get me?”

  Troy nodded.

  “Now, as I was sayin’,” Sam said tracing a line on his pad. “We found her phone and naturally, we scrutinized the text messages, call record, and photographs. There are a couple of fine ones of you, Mista Bodean.”

  Troy smiled and then realized the man was being sarcastic.

  “Best timeline we can put together goes somethin’ like this. You all entered Fish Heads around ten. Bartender on duty says you were pretty trashed when you came in. He served you for an hour before you passed out cold on the bar. He says the girls got tired of waitin’ for you to wake up and left you there around eleven-thirty. The last picture on Kimberly’s phone, taken at eleven-twenty-four, is a good shot of you droolin’ on a napkin.”

  Troy started to speak, but Sam interrupted him.

  “The bartender says you finally woke up around three-thirty in the mornin’ and he kicked you out. Security camera verifies this too.”

  “So, where did the girls go?”

  “We don’t know that much yet. What we do know, you might remember me sayin’, is the coroner says the girls were murdered somewhere in the neighborhood of midnight…give or take an hour.”

  “How does he know that?”

  “She,” Sam emphasized the word, “knows a lot more about such things than me or you. She says around midnight, I believe her.”

  Troy said, “Yes, sir.”

  “So, goin’ back to our timeline, I’ve got the girls leavin’ you at the bar at eleven-thirty, gettin’ their heads hacked off around midnight, and you sleepin’ like a daisy till three-thirty. At which point, you were thrown out and I presume, went home…to your boat.”

  “That is where I woke up, yes sir.”

  Sam scratched his chin, lightly stubbled with stark white scruff.

  “So, what we need to know is what happened to those girls between eleven-thirty and midnight. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “And how the heck they got on my boat.”

  Sam was quiet. He glanced down at the photographs of the girls’ severed heads.

  “Looks personal, don’t it?” he muttered.

  “What’s that?” Troy asked.

  “Somebody hated these girls enough to cut their heads off. Don’t you feel like that’s a personal crime? A crime committed by someone who really… really, hated them?”

  Troy thought about it for a second. “I don’t know about that. I saw terrorists doin’ lots worse than that to folks they didn’t even know.”

  “Mmhmm,” Sam sucked air through his teeth. “Maybe so. But I think we need to know more about what these girls did on a day-to-day basis. Who did they go to school with? Who did they work with? Where did they go on weekends? All that jazz.”

  “They worked with me, down at the Austin Fish Company. We were just finishin’ a shift when we got that bad shrimp order and boiled it up.”

  Sam picked up his Ticonderoga pencil and made a few notes. Troy realized it was much shorter now than it was yesterday. He’d sharpened it several times.

  “Then that’s where I’ll start.”

  The chief’s intercom buzzed.

  Before he pushed the button, he said, “Mista Bodean, you are free to go. I don’t think it would be wise to leave town. If we need anything further from you, we’ll give you a call.”

  “Thank you, sir. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. This is home.”

  For now, Troy thought.

  As he walked out the door, he heard Sam click his intercom button.

  “What is it, Darla?”

  As he walked down the hall, he could hear Darla continuing her side of the conversation.

  “Yeah, the Moss woman, Kim’s mom, she’s hired a P.I.”

  On the receiver and echoing down the hall, Troy heard Sam curse.

  He shrugged and pushed the door to head out of the station.

  “Yeah, some woman named Meira Carr,” he heard her say as the door closed.

  The sunshine blasted him in the eyes and he realized he didn’t have his Ray Bans. He hoped they were still on the boat too. Squinting through the light, he saw Officer Duffy leaning against his cruiser watching him walk out.

  “Need a lift?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “C’mon in.” He motioned to the front seat as he said it. “Where you headed? Back to your boat?”

  “Actually,” Troy rubbed the back of his neck. “I could use a beer. Is it five o’clock yet?”

  “It is somewhere.”

  Troy smiled and said, “Take me down to the Tortugas Lie.”

  “No Fish Heads eh?” he laughed.

  “Not a chance.”

  3

  Practice Your Chops

  The night before Troy woke up to the horrific scene on his boat, Barry Olsen Barron licked the razor sharp blade of his Dadao. He had worked the blade for months after he’d ordered it to ensure that the sword would slice through anything without hesitation. Sure he needed it for work, but it was so much more than that…it was his weapon in the game. It was his warrior’s sword.

  Hours and hours that he used to spend in the real world were now spent inside the virtual world of Bladehammer – a computer generated virtual world of magic, elves, trolls, orcs, and most importantly, damsels in distress. And why not? That world was so much more desirable than the hellhole he had outside the game.

  His mother had been gone for just over five years. A meth overdose took her out of her misery. Before that, she’d been an escort for Lucky Larry’s Ladies of Leisure call girl service. Them sure was fun times, Barry thought sarcastically. He’d gotten used to turning away the beefy, hairy guys banging on their trailer door at all hours of the morning hoping to see his mother on her day off. Sometimes they showed up with flowers, sometimes they showed up with alcohol or drugs, but she never let them in until they showed up with crisp, straight-from-the-ATM Benjamins. After that, she’d occasionally partake of the alcohol and drugs. Barry thought it must’ve taken away some of the guilt of letting these men have their way with her.

  His father was long gone from their happy home, having left the second he found out about her extracurricular activities. Barry thought this was odd because that was exactly how his father had met her. But his dad had chosen to stay close by, Barry was never sure why. Sometimes he wondered if his dad had stayed to keep an eye on them…to spy on them. He never saw his dad even though the man only lived a couple of streets over in the Red Dr
um Trailer Park.

  Anyway, none of that shit mattered when he logged onto Bladehammer and became Tryon the Tyrannical – an Orc from the underground city of Smythehaven. At first, he’d been happy to trot around the virtual playground chopping the heads off dragons and trolls and goblins and such, but that had gotten dull fast. And, since this was an open world land, there were other gamers hunting around and picking fights and such. Fighting real player characters was much more fun than the generic computer generated ones. Their moves were more unpredictable and they died in much more dramatic fashion. Tryon was one of the strongest characters in Bladehammer and had claimed the skullcaps of many an unfortunate game character in his travels.

  Soon, Barry discovered it was more fun to seek out the damsel characters and play with them. And after he was tired of them, he would draw his sword and chop off their heads. This too began to lose its excitement after a while. He would often sit around and wait until someone wandered close by and see if he could lop their heads off with one swing. He got very good at it.

  Boring.

  It was a Friday afternoon when he got off work and found a message blinking in his game email center. The sender’s address was blocked. It was a two-word email and he felt his excitement grow when he read it.

  Meet me?

  He read the words over and over and wondered if the sender meant in the game…or real life. His pulse raced as he studied the words and he became obsessed with meeting this anonymous player. He wrote and re-wrote his reply so many times he lost count. He tried to sound cool and eventually decided that he couldn’t pull that off and went for the direct approach.

  Where?

  He expected the reply to come quickly and be some city or town inside the game…but it wasn’t.

  That was the first time Tryon the Tyrannical had killed anyone outside the game. It was a feeling Barry had never had before…something between a cocaine buzz and intense sexual energy. It was intoxicating. He began using the game as a way to meet his victims and quickly found that gamers were loners, losers, and geeky idiots. They almost all agreed to meet him in the real world within minutes of meeting him in the game. And they all lost their heads soon after. The bodies of his first few victims went out of town in dumpsters he’d found behind local businesses all over town. Most of them were from places that were several hours’ drive away from Nags Head, so no one was looking for them and their bodies were never discovered.

  But that had changed when they found the head of that one girl…what was her name…Sophia? Sophie? Hell, he couldn’t remember. Since then, some alarm company had started offering free security cameras facing the dumpsters – if the business would sign up for monthly monitoring at a very reasonable cost.

  Barry went back to chopping off heads inside the safety of the world of Bladehammer. Virtual bodies didn’t need to be disposed of…and the cops didn’t care if you killed an Orc. Then came the itch. He guessed that most serial killers got it, but he didn’t know that for sure. The thrill…the high…he’d gotten from slamming his razor sharp Dadao blade through the flesh and bone of someone’s neck started itching him. He needed something. No, he needed someone. Someone to hack a head off of and dump in the ocean…or a dumpster…shit, no, that was out. It didn’t matter; he had to feed his demons.

  And then, he’d watched them prance into Fish Heads all freakin’ drunk and dancin’. Kim was half naked and Dana was tanked. He liked Fish Heads because it was a dive bar and they never carded him. He was pretty sure they knew he was only sixteen, but the douchebags behind the bar didn’t seem to care as long as his tips were good.

  It wasn’t a flashy, tourist place with umbrellas and shit in red and yellow fruity drinks. It was a place he could sip a beer and throw back the occasional whiskey without taking too much crap from anybody about smellin’ like fish. The girls were both so drunk they didn’t notice him sitting back at the corner of the bar. They wouldn’t notice him anyway; they were so snotty to him at work…like he was beneath them or something. Bitches.

  They plopped down whooping and hollering about some guy buying them drinks. His arms started itching and he realized they were his next damsels in distress. He pictured his extra sharp blade slicing through their skinny necks. Okay, Dana’s neck was skinny, Kim’s, not so much. He could almost hear their severed heads plopping down on the floor, rolling around in the warm arterial spray.

  Barry threw back another Jack Daniels and was about to sidle up next to them, when the other dude walked up and sat down between them.

  “Freakin’ shit!” Barry swore out loud and slammed his shot glass down.

  It was Troy. Damn Troy Bodean from the damn fish shop.

  “Hey, bro,” the bartender smacked his hands on the bar. “Easy on the glassware. What the hell, man?”

  Barry was jolted away from staring at the two girls and the guy throwing back Corona after Corona with them.

  “Ah, man, I’m sorry. Just ready for another.”

  The bartender looked him up and down before finally turning the empty shot glass over and pouring him another shot of Jack.

  At first, Barry was disappointed and resigned to living another day without satisfying the itch. But as he watched the three of them party late into the night, he began to see a scenario unfold that might be perfect to quench his warrior’s thirst for blood.

  4

  Jamaica, Mon

  Troy thanked Officer Duffy for the ride out to Tortugas Lie Shellfish Bar and Grill. It was one of the finest dive bars in Nags Head and Troy liked it better than Fish Heads anyway. The music was better, the seafood was fresher, and the tab was always a little cheaper. He opened the door to the wailing strains of Tommy Tutone’s song, 867-5309 / Jenny being played by a guy he hadn’t seen here before… but he was doing well enough. The lunch crowd was light with a few fishermen on their way in from the water and the vacation crowd on their way out to the beach.

  He plopped down at the bar and before he could place an order, the bartender sat a Corona in front of him with a slice of orange in it.

  “Thanks, Rusty.”

  “You look like shit.”

  “Nice to see you too.”

  Troy squeezed the orange into the bottle and pushed it down into the beer. He took a long, slow pull and a shiver of relaxation trailed up his spine. He sat the bottle down and grabbed a menu. Rusty, a bulky, redheaded guy with splotchy tan skin jerked it out of his hand.

  “Let me handle that for you.”

  “Much obliged,” Troy said as he tipped his hat.

  The singer launched into a tourist-pleasing version of Come Monday and a couple of random claps resounded around the restaurant. Troy turned around on his barstool to face the kid. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Kid probably don’t even know what the song is all about, thought Troy. But as he drank his beer, he couldn’t help but tap his foot on the stool.

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if it ain’t Troy Bodean as I live and breathe,” a ragged voice called from the door.

  Troy turned to see a tall gangly figure stooping to come into the bar. The sun silhouetted the man, but he could tell the guy was old. He had a limp that indicated that maybe his left knee didn’t move like it used to...might even be fused. As the man moved closer with a thump-step-thump-step sound, Troy began to recognize him.

  His hair was rough and gray and currently braided back into long cornrows that traced back from a long forehead all the way down to his shoulders. Around them, he wore an American flag bandana tied in a band above his bushy eyebrows. He didn’t wear a beard, but his chin was shadowed with gray stubble. A pair of reading glasses, that were clearly too small to be his, perched on his nose…one of the lenses was cracked.

  Jamaica Jack wore a denim vest, unbuttoned to show his hard, leathery belly sticking out above his belt. His jeans matched with a pair of old saddle-brown chaps over them. Turquoise American Indian jewelry set in sterling silver clinked on his wrists, fingers and neck. His black boots clomp
ed on the pine board floor as he walked up to the bar.

  “Jack?”

  “Damn straight, brother,” the man said as he grabbed Troy’s arm and hauled him up off the stool into a bear hug. “It’s been a while, ain’t it? Maybe ten years?”

  “Not quite,” Troy pointed to the stool beside him. “The usual?”

  “Nah, shit,” Jack held his hands up to protest. “Had to give up the hard stuff a few years back. Started coughin’ up blood and the doc didn’t like that much.”

  “Dang, that don’t sound good.”

  “Just some acid indigestion. How ‘bout one o’ them sissy beers yer drinkin’?”

  Troy laughed and pointed at his bottle when he caught Rusty’s eye.

  “Two more.”

  “Oranges?”

  “Yup.”

  “How the hell are you, Troy? What’re you doin’ out in these parts?”

  “Doin’ some fishin’ and workin’. How ‘bout you?”

  “ ‘Bout the same. I was campin’ out down here not too long ago, but I’m crashin’ in Cape Charles…for now.”

  “Campin’ out?”

  “Yeah, you know me…ramblin’ man, right? Got a boat, do some tourist fishin’ and shit. Anyway, enough about me. How’s life treatin’ ya?”

  Troy gulped the last sip of his beer down and slid the bottle back on the bar.

  “Been good, real good.”

  “Uh huh.” Jack sniffed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “And you’re a shitty liar. You look like hell. What’s goin’ on?”

  Rusty sat the beers down in front of them. Troy picked his up and nodded to the deck out back.

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Seriously, dude?” Jack looked down at his leg.

  “Oh, uh—.”

  “I’m kiddin’, Troy. Let’s go.” He smiled and pulled himself up to limp toward the door.

  Troy led him out on the deck. A group of college kids were playing volleyball in the restaurant’s sand court, but other than them, the porch was empty.