He swore silently and rushed forward along the alley toward the main part of the street, trying to appear as casual as possible as he emerged and shaded his eyes against the cold winter sun. He looked left and right, his mind racing. No sign of him. How had he managed to lose a man whose routine had seemed to stay the same every day until now?
He turned and looked up, noticing for the first time the building he had been hiding behind. A liquor store.
His gaze dropped down to the windows, and he saw the captain there at the counter, handing over money for a bottle of rum.
He laughed to himself, out loud, quickly stifling it when he realized that someone else might hear.
Oh, God, tonight couldn’t come quickly enough.
He would do it now, if it wasn’t for the fact that it took so long to get them up on the figureheads. If there was a place somewhere out of the way, a place where he could get the captain up on the figurehead without being seen, then he would have done it as soon as the opportunity to get him alone presented itself. But it wasn’t that simple. If he did it out in the open and people saw, then he would be in a jail cell.
At least he might have some kind of protection there. But he wasn’t convinced. There was still a chance that they could get him—they were that powerful. And behind bars, he would have no way to finish what he needed to do in order to appease them.
He needed to do this tonight. He needed to get it done.
He turned and glanced up at the sky, at the sun stubbornly hidden behind grey clouds one moment and then bursting out to try to warm the frigid weather the next. It was moving too slowly. He wanted it to move faster, to dive for the horizon so it would be time already.
He did not relish this task that he had to do, ending the life of the captain. But he would not regret it, either, because it needed to be done. The sooner the better. If he could just get it done and finished with, everything would be alright again.
If he could just get it done, he would save his own life. And that thought had him turning his back on the store, playing it safe, waiting for the jingle of the bells to signal the captain’s departure instead of staring at him. He would get his chance soon enough.
And he wasn’t going to miss it.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to walk slowly, allowing the captain to get ahead of him again, wondering how the alcohol would have a part to play tonight and hoping it would not ruin his carefully laid plans.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Laura found her steps taking her down to the docks, the scent of the salt water on the breeze drawing her like a moth to a flame. At least it was more peaceful out here. Despite the sounds of people talking, yelling, laughing, and screaming, it seemed like the ocean waves washed them all away if she concentrated hard enough. Then there was only the water, the measured and rhythmic swell and ebb, almost the same and yet unique every time.
Out here, she felt more like she could breathe.
Maybe there was something to be said for a life by the sea. Perhaps she would consider that when she was older, much older, when the FBI finally decided that they had no more use for her. She touched the wooden railing that prevented tourists from stepping out into the water, wondering idly if it would send her some vision of herself in a retirement community on the coast, Lacey coming to visit her with her own children.
There was nothing, of course. Her visions weren’t working strongly enough for something like that. And besides, they had never once shown her what she actually wanted to see. Not on command.
Laura sighed, trying to breathe that fresh air deeper into her lungs. There was a slight tang of fish in the air, but it was faint compared to the sea itself. Somewhere out there, the killer was breathing in this same air. He must have had this same scent in his nostrils while he lashed Elias Makks and Dina Grey to their figureheads.
Laura remembered what Alana Garland had said. That he smelt like the sea. Could it be that he was someone who worked so closely by it that the scent had soaked into his clothes, skin, and hair?
Perhaps, but it was a slim lead. Half the town probably had the same scent on them. The people who lived and worked here were fishermen, tour guides, boat owners and operators, wait staff on board ships—all of it tied inexorably to the sea.
Was there something in that? Laura lifted her eyes to the horizon where sea met sky, then swept her gaze left and right. There was a slight curve to the land that allowed her to see the coastline on both sides, part of a shallow bay.
Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. But she needed to understand this killer. To understand what she had seen in her vision. She needed to know what it meant and just who he was.
She thought about the book that he’d been reading. Illustrated with a picture of a figurehead. It was like he was researching what he was going to do, looking up the types of figureheads or learning about what they symbolized maybe. Was there something in that, even? Laura thought back. She was sure that all three figureheads had been largely generic. Carvings of female figures, wrapped in loose wooden robes that flowed over their figures as if plastered to them by water, looking out toward the sea. There wasn’t any symbolism in that, was there?
Laura picked up her cell phone from her pocket and opened the file server she had access to for the case files, flicking through photographs quickly. The boats—she hadn’t ever really thought of them before. They each had their own names, of course. That was a given with boats, even though it hadn’t occurred to her.
Elias Makks’s ship was called theAnne Bonney, and the carving on the front resembled a woman with a cutlass in her hand and an eyepatch covering one eye. A pirate. Laura had heard of her enough to know that it was a reference to a famous historical pirate. No doubt that was all part of the pirate tour, something else that he could tell the tourists about to build up the experience.
The second ship, the one that Dina Grey was found bound to, was theSeashell. The figurehead looked like she was supposed to be a mermaid—a beautiful woman with a bra made out of seashells, a ribbon of flowing cloth connecting them and wrapping around her body, probably in celebration of the skill of the carver.
The third ship, the one on the front of the museum building, no longer appeared to have a name attached to it no matter which angle the photographs were taken from. The figurehead was simple, though. A woman with an outstretched torch in her hand, something that almost put Laura in mind of the Statue of Liberty.Guiding the way for the sailors through dark and stormy seas, Laura thought. A very apt choice.
But what did that tell her?
Three carvings of women, but from what she knew of figureheads so far, that didn’t seem to be so unusual. One of them was a real figure from history, one of them was a creature from myth, one was just a generic kind of good luck charm for the boat. What connection did they have?