Slaughter's First Case

SLAUGHTER’S FIRST CASE

by William C. Morley

Published on Smashword

by Western Grebe Publishing

All rights reserved

© William C. Morley 2014

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

George

Dolores

Osgood

Cassie

TV News

Ransacked

Awakened

Revelations

What to do Next?

Charlie

Fishy Business

Dinner Out

Boat Action

A Fright

The Scooter

Art Class

Town, School, Waterfront

Lunch

Suspicions Shared and a Little Cheer

Study Time

A Plan

Plans Often Change

Proactive

Day of Action

Discoveries

Searching

Setting the Stage

A Plan Evolves

Cassie Again

How Did She Know?

About the Author

Acknowledgements

To Carrie for her patience, encouragement, and invaluable assistance, to Dave for inspiration by example, to Peter Tewksbury for guidance and a long day in Vermont, and to Karen, Chris, Kyle, and Aaron for tutoring me in the art of parenting.

George

Sunday, as the first light of day casts its dim glow over Nomo Bay, the engines of the Dollie B, 65-foot steel fishing vessel idle smoothly, the fuel tanks and bait tanks ready for a few days of fishing. George Silvacio, owner, skipper and sole hand, wears waterproof black canvas pants, and a black pea coat. His waterproof lace-up boots with their anti-skid soles tuck up into the bottom of his pants legs and a black beanie cap pulled down to his bushy black eyebrows covers his formerly black but greying and still-thick hair. He devotes his attention to stepping into and fastening a combination safety and flotation harness around his stocky body. In one smooth motion, his hand moving from the final clasp on the harness, he grasps the snap-end of a cable from a reel that is secured to the center of the cabin and attaches it to the harness.

Though the sky above and to the east is clear, wisps of fog headed inland drift past the Dollie B as Silvacio casts off lines. Looking up and to the west he notes the visibility is reduced to about two hundred yards by the approaching fog. Then he walks toward a ladder affixed to the rear of the cabin. He grasps a rung and disconnects the cable from his harness. It quickly recoils into the reel as he, displaying more agility than many would suspect of him, scales the ladder and enters the bridge, where he immediately fastens another cable to the harness. Then, manipulating the throttle and the wheel, he carefully moves his boat away from the dock and into the channel.

No one watched the Dollie B as she moved away. An observer might think the motion magical if it weren’t for a slight sound of engine purr and water splash. The radar antenna on a mast above the cabin begins its rotation. Inside, the display with its rotating light bar pops up on the screen in front of George.

The sign at the far edge of the channel reads 5 mph – No Wake, a warning George always observes except that today, with the reduced visibility, he shaves just a bit on the low side.

When he approaches the northernmost pier, where the Harbor Patrol office and the Coast Guard station share offices, he calls on the radio to let them know he is exiting the harbor. ’Dollie B’, Nomo Bay, heading out. Someone from each office acknowledges his transmission. He knows his departure is logged. He snaps on the circuit breaker to activate the float switches, one of which turns on the bilge pump when the water reaches the float level. The second switch activates a homing beacon if the water level rises high enough to reach a second float.

The tide moves slowly out and George’s engines idle, barely maintaining enough headway to steer as he moves to the head of the bay. Upon reaching the final buoy on his northerly route he turns to port, taking up a heading to pass through the outer harbor toward the as yet unseen gap between the two breakwaters that maintain calm inside the bay during even the most violent storms.

He passes a large, dark shadow on his starboard side: the giant hulk of Nomo Rock, shrouded in fog. In front of him he is not yet able to see the end of the north breakwater but can see the light from the beacon on the breakwater’s tip; its high-pitched horn sounds periodically. As he passes the beacon he begins to feel the rise and fall of the open ocean and increases the rpm of his engines to 80%. By the time he reaches the lighted buoy, there is only the modest protection of Point Bellenas to the north to modify any swells that might travel from that direction.

The fog surrounds. George turns the wheel so that his compass shows a heading of West by Southwest and, pulling a scrap of paper from his coat pocket enters the latitude and longitude of the location written on the paper into his GPS.

The lighted bar rotating around the center of the radar screen illuminates any solid objects within its circle; aside from the unseen Nomo Rock behind him, it shows nothing.

Dolores

When he sees Dolores push through the door into his office that morning, her eyes rimmed by sleeplessness and her hair not quite all together; he thinks early. Early for her: nine O’clock. Certainly early, he thinks, for a waitress who works the dinner shift at a late night place like The Refuge to be walking into her insurance agent's office.

But before that, when he sees her outside the glass door right in his line of vision, before she comes, his first thought is the same as each time he sees her: of all the times he asked her for a second date and was rejected. Ever since his junior year in high school, after that first date, twenty-five, twenty-six years ago, when they almost became more than just good friends in the back seat of a car, Dolores's presence always confuses him. And her appearance that Monday morning does nothing to clear things up. Strands of dark hair float freely about her head and over her face, highlighting an unusual pallor in her complexion. She wears a maroon tee-shirt imprinted with a pelican, a white cardigan and faded jeans. On her feet she wears pink slip-on sneakers and low-cut white socks. Her smile in response to the brief Hi he tosses her way is brief and superficial. He knows she has trouble. She'd had a wreck or a fire and needs to file a claim. The only kind of trouble people come to see him about is the insurance kind.

He stands behind the counter. A prospective customer stands on the opposite. They both study, the computer screen while he asks questions and enters information to obtain a quotation for auto insurance.

His office is just one big room, divided by the counter into the customer space and the worker space. Besides him, Sue, his office assistant is the only other occupant of the worker space. Wearing a buttoned-up cream-colored blouse and sharply-pressed blue slacks, her customary attire varied only by the color of the blouse, Sue is about five foot six atop her navy blue flats. Her wavy shoulder length hair that was maybe red once but has changed with the passage of time to gray-flecked auburn flows around her narrow face. Sue is efficient and knowledgeable but her best characteristics are that she is cheerful, despite a home life that would sink a lesser spirit, and thin, an office essential, where the workers often have to do a side step double shuffle to fit between desks or slip by one another when a file drawer is out. And so reliable he sometimes wonders if the sun uses her for its role model. Actually, in the little town of Nomo Bay, she is significantly more reliable than the sun, which spends a lot of its time hiding above the fog.

It is Sue, then, who gets up from her desk and moves to the counter to greet Dolores, catching her attention with a friendly smile and asking if she could be of assistance. When Dolores nods in his direction and murmurs something about needing to see him, Sue tells her it will be a few minutes and asks her to please make herself comfortable while she waits, which she does and doesn’t do, taking a seat on the edge of one of the two chairs facing the counter while continuing to stare directly at him.

For him, talking with Dolores usually includes an inability to speak coherently, his attention deflected by bizarre combinations of emotions, such as affection and fear, tenderness and resentment, while the one or two big inadequately answered questions hover at the boundary of his conscious thought. Today, because her need obviously calls upon his professional expertise he looks forward to helping her without his thoughts becoming distracted by recollections of the past.

Her wait is longer than he expected. It seems so often to happen that his anticipation of beginning something different stretches the time it takes to finish the current project. He finishes explaining the quotation for the man at the counter and, instead of leaving with the quotation, the man decides to buy the policy. Since most of the information is already entered, it is only necessary for him to go out, inspect the car, verify the identification number, print the application, get a signature and collect the money. He is finished and thanking the new customer, simultaneously handing the papers to Sue while almost in the same motion, turning toward Dolores.

Hi, he repeats.

Hello, Oz. The tone of her voice matches her distracted appearance and she seems a little jumpy as she gets up from her chair and steps to the counter.

What's wrong? From behind Sue's chair one sideways step brought him to the nearest filing cabinet; he drops to one knee and pulled out the drawer containing the Silvacio files.

George is dead.

He turns to look at her more carefully, expecting to see the hint of a teasing smile betraying the dull sound of her words.

Oh, no! Sue is one of those women who seem somehow to internalize the problems of others almost as if they were her own; her words are a passionate punctuation to Dolores's simple statement. She rushes to the counter and clasps Dolores's hands, looking into her eyes. I'm so sorry.

For his part, layers of defensive insulation block immediate contact with his feelings, leaving his unstructured consciousness wide open to the mélange of ideas and memories popping out of unknown hiding spots: of George and his brusque ways; the wide circle of his acquaintances, some of whom were his companions or cronies but most of whom would be happy to attend his funeral; the women from all walks of life whom he had bedded; Dolores unattached and entirely free again to fuel his imagination of what might have been.

He looks at her eyes. Clearly she hadn’t slept much and this morning he sees a red tint at their corners. Despite that, they are lovely, large, dark; as enigmatic as ever.

I'm sorry, Dolores. The sympathy in his voice sounds contrived to him.

Thank you. Dolores puts her hand on Sue's, patting it, glancing at Oz. I'll survive. George and I... it was like an understanding; we didn't fool ourselves.

Neither George nor Dolores had ever made a secret about the nature of their relationship: good humored and somewhat traditional on the surface, fatalistic and negotiated underneath, with the unspoken rule that neither partner was to mention or hint at personal infidelities. A pact which did not extend to the community at large, where the small-town gossip often centered upon the activities, or suspected activities, of one or the other of them. Of the two, George was the least discreet by far: when he wasn't out fishing he oftentimes picked up a night's entertainment in the bar of The Refuge, even while Dolores waited tables in the dining room of the same establishment.

Ever since his senior year in high school, when he had finally given up on the idea of ever dating her again and had begun going with Marge, his personal contact with Dolores had been constrained, overshadowed in his mind by the events of the past, closing off for him the ability to reminisce; all recollections of the 'good old school days' being haunted by one short but complex question: Why? Why did she stop going out with me and still go out with everyone else? That meant everyone else. Why did she suddenly break-off dating, when she was only nineteen years old, and marry old George?

Even after he finished college and moved back to Nomo Bay and married Marge, he still couldn't talk to Dolores. Marge could talk to her. It was strange: as soon as Dolores was married she and Marge became close friends. She told Marge things, personal things.

Marge once told him something Dolores had said about being married to George. She told him that Dolores said she had married him because he was safe. She never enjoyed dating and listening to all the stupid promises men made and she knew George was safe: he didn't beat her, he earned a fair income as a commercial fisherman, he was gone almost half the time, and he didn't demand more than he gave.

Maybe that meant something to Marge; it didn't to Oz. Dolores was beautiful when she was nineteen. Marge was beautiful too, but Dolores was always smiling, quick to utter a happy thought or a lively comment; there was a bounce in her walk as if she could leave the ground with each step. Why did she want to marry at all, let alone someone as old and as irascible as George? Why did she want someone safe? There are a lot of men who don't beat their wives. What sort of safety did she seek? Why did she risk that safety by seeing other men from time to time? For that matter, if she didn't enjoy dating, why did she see anyone at all?

Well, if George is now dead, Oz didn't see that the chance of ever having answers to those questions was enhanced. He certainly wouldn’t be getting any further answers from Marge after what she had done and he didn't see any non-stupid way to ask Dolores directly.

Would you like to come over and stay with us tonight? Leave it to Sue to think of something helpful like that; and she meant the offer, too, no matter how things at home might turn out. The only thing Sue could count on as far as the way her husband, Walt, acted was that it would usually be the opposite of what she expected. Faced with a visitor, his behavior could vary as widely as rude comments to Dolores and giving Sue hell for the next two weeks to getting turned on by having a beautiful widow in the house and making a pass at her.

Oh, thank you Sue. Dolores glances quickly at Oz telling him she, too, thought about the consequences for Sue if she should accept the kind, simple invitation. Small town gossip can be harmful but, in this case, Dolores was guided by gossip to protect Sue. It's so good of you to offer, but I'll be fine. Really.

How did it happen? He figures Dolores came in to get started on a life insurance claim so he aims to bring the conversation closer to that goal while he quickly brought up the simple claim form on the computer screen.

He was murdered. Her voice is flat, non-committal.

You're kidding!

Murders occur rarely in Nomo Bay; the home town people feel them more acutely, more personally, than residents of the big cities feel about similar incidents in their locale. Here the news of murder travels fast. The objective of the gossip game is to be the first to know and, failing that, to have been the first to