Geert stayed with the body while I walked though the barrier of crew and plastic cones, crossing the Astroturf strip that was the ship’s putting green. I climbed the stairs to a short deck offering a netted basketball court. Beyond that, a crewman was lowering a diagonally divided red-and-yellow flag from the mast. The “O” flag. O for “Overboard.”
Stepping onto the basketball court, I opened my cell phone, ignoring two missed calls from DeMott and an incriminating sparkle the sun kicked up in my engagement ring. I scrolled through my phone book until I found the number for Alex McLeod, my former supervisor in the FBI’s violent crimes unit of the Seattle field office.
Taking a deep breath, I prepared the urgent petition inside my head.
He answered on the first ring. “McLeod.”
“Sir, it’s Raleigh Harmon.”
“Raleigh! Tell me you’re calling to come back. I’ve got an assignment here with your name written on it.”
Last year a disciplinary transfer sent me from Richmond to Seattle. McLeod turned out to be a decent boss, but when my punishment was lifted several months later, I ran straight home to Richmond. And to DeMott.
“Actually, sir, I’m on a cruise ship. In Alaska.”
“Vacation? Good, Raleigh. You need it.”
I hesitated, wondering how much to tell him right away. How much he would believe. “Yes, sir, vacation. But there’s one problem. A woman was just found hanging off the back of the ship. The cruise line is ruling it a suicide.”
“You want me to notify the Alaska office, is that it? So it’s on record?”
I turned a slow circle, making sure nobody could overhear my words. Three basketballs were rolling across the sports court, spinning with the sea swells. “Sir, I don’t think it’s a suicide.”
“Why?”
“She was hanging at least twenty feet from the deck by a thin nylon rope. Maybe thirty feet. There’s no ladder. Which means she had to jump.”
“Okay, she jumped. People jump overboard.”
“But a jump like that, with that rope, would’ve practically decapitated her. The rope would rip right through the skin and tissue. When they pulled her up, her neck showed only minor bruising. She looks like somebody taking a nap.”
“Raleigh . . .”
I knew that tone of voice. I heard it daily in Seattle, after I insisted a missing persons case didn’t look right.
“Sir, I also found a piece of jewelry,” I pressed on, trying to bolster my argument. “A bracelet, buried under another rope. Eight or ten stones, a total of about fifteen to twenty carats. And they don’t look fake.”
“She jumped, it fell off.”
“Respectfully, sir?”
“Go on.” He sighed.
“This suicide required the kind of planning that goes down to the last detail. If somebody prepares that much, how would they forget to take off a bracelet worth at least fifty grand? For that matter, why wear it at all?”
During the long pause that followed, the wind swept over my phone, the static sounding like a distant storm.
“Where’s the ship?” McLeod finally asked.
This was what I liked about the guy: he always listened. Didn’t always agree, but he trusted agent instincts.
“The ship turned around, thinking she was overboard. Now we’re heading back to Ketchikan.”
“We have no jurisdiction, Raleigh.”
“Yes, sir. I realize that. One more thing?”
“What?”
“Her husband’s Milo Carpenter.”
“The movie star?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Milo Carpenter—he’s on your ship?”
“He’s filming a movie. He plays an FBI agent.” Badly, I wanted to add. Very badly. “And, well, here’s the last thing. I’m onboard as a consultant.”
“That’s not a vacation, Raleigh.”
“Yes, sir.”
Another silence followed. “You need a vacation,” he said.
I imagined McLeod, sitting in his glass booth of an office surrounded by the violent crimes squad. He would be wearing his standard white shirt and dark slacks, his red suspenders freckled with oily stains.
“Sir, I wouldn’t be calling unless—”
“The cruise ship has no suspicions?”
“Suicide, no questions asked.” I described for him how the body was pulled up before any substantial evidence could be collected. How Geert already called the cops, the funeral home, and labeled it a suicide before the autopsy was done. “The Alaska State Troopers are coming to close out the scene. No sirens. That was the order.”
“Okay, we let the troopers handle it until later—”
“No, sir.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, we can’t. The crime scene’s compromised already, and I doubt the troopers will recognize the impossible physics of this thing. In addition to having no major damage to her neck and throat, she’d have to be an acrobat to climb down there with a rope. At night. On a ship. You see where I’m going? If the FBI doesn’t pursue this, somebody gets away with murder.”
“And you’re willing to take it on?”
The rub.
“I might have a conflict of interest, given my consulting job with the deceased’s husband. And, well, here’s another thing.”
“You just said you told me the last thing.”
“The dead woman hired my aunt to do some consulting on the movie as well.”
Judy Carpenter, I explained, wanted my aunt to teach the movie crew about the healing powers of rocks. That part I didn’t want to explain to McLeod. To anybody.
“Sir, you know I’d take it, but given the circumstances . . .”
“Another way to look at this is, you’ve got an inside line.”
“Yes, sir. But could you contact the Alaska office, ask them to take it?”
“Because it’s you, Raleigh, I will. You’ve extinguished yourself before.”
Along with food freckling his suspenders, McLeod dropped malaprops whenever he opened his mouth. I had neither the bad manners nor the courage to correct him and simply inserted the right word in my mind. Here, I replaced “extinguished” with “distinguished.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll see if they can send an agent on board. Then you can go back to your version of a vacation. In the meantime, stick close to this until you hear back from me. Maintain procedure as much as possible. Talk to the husband. His statement might not be admissible later but it’ll help whichever agent gets assigned to the case.” He paused. “What’s he like?”
“Sir?”
“Milo Carpenter.”
“He’s a drunk.”
“I’ll tell my wife,” he said. “She sees that guy in a movie or on some magazine and she’s tinkled pink.”
I did the substitutions—“tickled” for “tinkled”—then thanked him for listening. It was more than my boss in Richmond would have done.
“You’re welcome,” McLeod said. “I’ll call as soon as we hear back from the Alaska office.”
As I walked back along the steel rail, tasting the salt that rose from the ocean, I could see Geert and his bald pate reddening in the sun. He stood over the tarp-covered body like a man guarding a good parking space.
“You called the FBI?” he said.
I nodded, not surprised by his question. Cruise ships hired the best security money could buy. As he said himself, this wasn’t his first trip through the tunnel of love. But as we stood there with her body between us, I sensed borders forming, the boundaries that divided our disputed territories. I wanted truth. Geert wanted protection—protection of the ship’s reputation.
“While you called your people, I hunted down the husband,” he said, as if his choice trumped mine.
Led by two Ninjas, the movie star passed though the human security line. Every head swiveled to follow him, until Geert gave one quick shake of his head. The tall Ninja pivoted and turned to the crew. The employees whipped back around, facing the deck’s public area.
Milo, meanwhile, was staggering toward us. Like most movie stars, he seemed smaller in person, even with his six feet of height. There was something compact about him, so that the broad shoulders seemed out of proportion with his narrow chest and slender hips. His face was rough-hewn, ruddy from booze. His strongest feature was bright green eyes. They were glazed this morning. They’d been that way since we left Seattle. But the varnish looked different now. Perhaps from shock.
Perhaps not.
Geert said, “I am sorry.”
Slowly the Dutchman leaned down, pinching the edge of the tarp. “It will seem rude, but I must ask.”
He paused, seeking permission.
Milo nodded.
Geert pulled the plastic all the way back. “Is this your wife?”
The actor seemed frozen. When he finally moved, his feet were leaden, moving closer to the body, walking like a man condemned. His green eyes once again found Geert, but they seemed dull, unable to see.
“I felt the boat turning around,” he said, wooden. “I thought you found her. On board. Not . . .” The words trailed away as he stared down at the noose still around her neck.
Geert waited. “I am sorry, Mr. Carpenter.”
Milo’s eyes shifted. They went first to the steel half wall, then the mooring line. He followed the thick rope from where it wrapped around the steel pole, to the orange rope that snaked around her pale throat and the strand of purple bruises. Her fatal necklace.
And then suddenly his face fractured. It broke with pain and revulsion and fear.
Plenty of fear.
Geert quietly offered some abbreviated details. Coast Guard called, found hanging, clearly a suicide. Silently I begged him to stop talking. But it was not the FBI’s investigation.
Not yet.
When a commotion broke over at the security line, we turned to see a stout man trying to break through. The man began yelling.
“Sandy . . .” Milo said in a weak voice.
Sandy Sparks, one of the film’s producers. My aunt introduced him the first day, making sure I understood that Mr. Sparks helped pay for our tickets, for our consulting services.
“Would you like him to come over?”
The movie star nodded.
Geert flicked his eyes at a Ninja who gave a hand signal. The human barrier immediately parted.
“Did she—” Milo swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Did she suffer?”
Rather than answer, Geert watched the pudgy man. Short arms pumping, he approached us as if running, though he looked like someone who had never run anywhere, ever.
“Did she suffer?” Milo repeated.
Geert continued to pretend he couldn’t hear him.
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Carpenter, was your wife depressed?”
He turned, recognizing me. Then he looked confused. “Why are you here?”
“I’m with the FBI.”
“But you’re—you’re with us.” He pointed to his chest, implying the movie production. Then he turned to Geert. “Why do you need the FBI here?”
“She was on the ship,” Geert replied, in a tone that said I was some unwanted accessory, free of charge, like an extra ashtray in a new car.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I continued. “Was she upset about something, depressed in any way?”
His broad shoulders hunched. He gave a small nod.
“Did she give any indication she might do something like this?”
The green eyes flashed like emeralds. “If she had, you think I’d let her come on this ship?”
Geert twirled the mustache. Stupid question.
But I had another one. “Did she have any knowledge of knots?”
“Knots?” Carpenter said, even more confused. But then his eyes dropped to the orange line and I watched the successive layers of comprehension explode inside his mind, detonating with the well-tied knots. When he looked up at me, the veneer was shattered. The pudgy man arrived, crying out his name. “Milo! Milo!”
The actor was too tall, his shoulders too wide, for the shorter man to grab, but Sandy Sparks reached up anyway. It was an awkward hug. Milo looked like an overgrown boy craving parental comfort.
“Sandy,” Milo said. Tears were coming now. Tears whose absence had me wondering. “Sandy—Judy is dead.”
“I heard. I’m sorry, Milo. I’m sorry.”
“She hung herself, Sandy!” He pointed to the tarp that Geert had once again pulled over her body.
The chubby man nodded, gazing at the lumpy shape. Then he glanced at Geert. “He saw her?” he asked.
Geert nodded, grimly. “I wanted her identified here. He tries to go to the funeral home, the lookie-looks will take photos.”
Sparks looked around, suddenly assessing the risks. He stared at the human barrier. “Wow, thank you.”
“Most welcome.” Geert nodded. “We are here to help.”
Sparks turned to Milo. “I know this is bad, man, but you need to get out of here. If anybody takes a picture, it’s the cover of the Enquirer. And that rag has enough pictures of you.”
Milo straightened.
“You hear what I’m saying?”
Milo wiped his face, as if pulling himself together, then allowed Sparks to lead him away while Geert signaled to the tall Ninja who was hovering near us, ever silent.
“Escort Mr. Carpenter back to his room,” Geert said. “Keep them on the back stairs.”
I started to say something.
But he glanced over, cutting me off.
“And guard his cabin door,” he told the Ninja. “Just in case.”