“Zach asked me into the cabin to watch him with Faith. He’d snorted coke and was high. He got off on being watched and said I might learn a thing or two. He hogtied her and had sex with her, and the ropes kept getting tighter. She tried to tell him to stop, and she started sobbing, and ... and he kind of went berserkers. I yelled at him to stop. I swear, I did, but he grabbed a steak knife and made like he was going to hurt her if I came close enough to stop them. It was part of his game, his fantasy, I guess. And ... next thing she wasn’t breathing. He thought she was messing with him. Then he saw it was for real, and he panicked and tried to get the rope off her neck with the steak knife, but it just frayed the strands, and I tried to help him.” Norton-Wells struggled for a deep, steadying breath. “Then we called for help.”
“Steak knives?”
“From some fancy beef they’d served that night with black truffles. I ...” He gagged suddenly at the memory, closed his eyes, sat in silence, trying to get past his nausea.
“So you handled the ropes?” Maddocks said, coaxing him before they lost him.
He nodded. “And again when Zina came in. Zina assessed the place and then told us to go to Madame’s office up on the mid deck and to not say a word to anyone.”
“What transpired in Madame Vee’s office?”
“She gave us brandy from her special collection and kept us for over an hour, saying there was nothing to worry about. They’d handled situations like this before. And by the time we got home, it would all be cleaned up and long gone into the past, swept under the rug. And she said that maybe we should just lay low and take it easy awhile. Not return for a bit.”
“And then?”
“We left.”
“Straight home?”
“No. Zach and I reached the marina parking lot, and I started flipping out, saying that maybe we should report it. I ... I was a mess. I was scared. He told me that I was being an idiot, that we’d both end up in prison. I tried to get into my Lexus, which was parked right beside Zach’s Acura, and he grabbed me, worried I was going to drive straight to the cops, and we wrestled until he punched me in the jaw, and I just kinda broke down and cried. We sat in Zach’s vehicle. I don’t know for how long. Engine running. Drinking whiskey—he had a hip flask. It was cold, had started to snow. That arctic front was moving in. Snow was settling on the windshield, and the windows were misting up. Then suddenly Zach kinda ... screamed. There was a face looking into the driver’s side window, right up against the glass, just staring.” He cleared his throat, and Maddocks pushed a cup of water toward him. He sipped.
“We realized it was one of the deckhands—a guy we’d seen before on theAmanda Rose.”
“This deckhand have a name?”
“I don’t know his name. I only saw him in passing, working up on deck. He stood out—super fit, ripped body. Good-looking, angular face.” Norton-Wells inhaled deeply, and Angie could see that he was tiring. She glanced at her watch. From experience, she figured they didn’t have much more time before he shut down fully. Tension twisted through her.
“Zach wound down the window and asked what the fuck the guy wanted, staring into the car like some moron. And this deckhand said he knew. He knew what had happened, what Zach and I had done to Faith. He described it in detail, like he’d seen it all for himself. Every detail. Down to the stuff Zach said to me, the steak knife, Faith sobbing. Zach fucking her hard, which opened her legs more, which made the ropes around her neck go tighter. This guy said he’d gotten rid of the body for us. Then he just waited, staring at us. Zach told him to get lost. But I could see that Zach was getting scared—this guy was freaking him out. Then the guy said, okay, if that’s what we wanted, if that’s all the thanks he was going to get, he might have to tell someone what we’d done. It was like he was messing with us, just to see how we reacted.” He swallowed, sipped again from the cup Maddocks had given him.
“I got really scared, too—he was weird. I asked him what he wanted in order to just shut him the hell up, to make him disappear. He looked at my Lexus, parked right there beside Zach’s vehicle, and said that he always wanted one of those.” Norton-Wells paused, gathering himself.
“So I told him to take it, to just get the fuck away. I threw him the keys. He caught them, got into the Lexus, and I never heard from him again. Never saw him again. And I wasn’t going to report the vehicle stolen for obvious reasons—if it was picked up, he’d tell the cops what we’d done.”
Angie and Maddocks regarded him in silence, allowing tension to press down on the small, overly warm room.
Maddocks said, quietly, “And Gracie?”
His features twisted. He looked as though he was going to puke for real this time.
“I learned what happened to her on the news. And when I heard about Faith’s body showing up, I figured right away that had to be him—the sick freak who took my Lexus. I mean, he worked on the boat. He knew everything that happened in that cabin with Zach and Faith. He took Faith’s body. He had to have known about Gracie, too. And then you guys came around asking about the Lexus in connection with a crime.”
“Does this guy live aboard theAmanda Rose?”
“All I know is that when I went to see Madame Vee on Friday, she told me that he’d originally been hired as a carpenter, and that he’d done double duty as a deckhand, but he’d vanished on the night Faith died—never came back to work.”
“A carpenter?”
“Yeah. He maintained all the wood on the boat, and there’s lots. Wooden decks, railings, paneling. He built and repaired cabinets, fittings, that kind of thing.”
“Whydidyou visit theAmanda Roseon Friday, Jayden?” Angie shifted to lean on her other shoulder against the wall.
He scrubbed his hands hard over his face again, making it red and blotchy. “Because I was freaking out. It wasmyLexus you were talking about. I knew it had to be him, the weird carpenter guy who took my vehicle. And I heard that psychologist talking on the radio, saying Gracie’s killer would kill again, and soon, and he wouldn’t stop until he was caught. And the newspapers were talking about this sex serial killer having links to earlier rapes. And no one was stopping him. Zach had quit returning my calls—like he’d cut me off. I ... Ihadto tell the Bacchanalian Club that it was him—their carpenter, that he’d taken my car, that he was doing these things, and that they had to stop this monster. But Madame said to forget about it, that the carpenter was gone, not our problem. And that if I went to the police with this information, we’d all go down for the murder of Faith Hocking, and more.” His glance flickered briefly to his legal counsel.
“Madame said her clientele is huge and comprised of incredibly powerful figures like a sitting judge, lawyers, top business execs, law enforcement, even. And I knew this was true because I’d seen faces on that yacht that I recognized from the provincial legislature and the media. Madame said they’d all be implicated, and my mother and father’s careers would be toast. And then she looked at me long and hard and asked if I was going to be able to weather this storm.”
He raised both hands and clamped them down hard on either side of his head, as if the information inside his skull was trying to explode outward. “I don’t think she believed I could. That’s when Zina called Damián in. They said he was a ‘fixer’ and that he’d be someone I could turn to after they pulled up anchor—they wanted me to meet with him.”
“Pulled up anchor?”
