THE CARBON STEEL CARESS Read online

  THE CARBON STEEL CARESS

  A Johnny Dolan P.I. Novel

  By GC SMITH

  Century Oak Press

  THE CARBON STEEL CARESS

  Century Oak Press

  The Carbon Steel Caress, copyright  2011 by Gerard C. Smith, Century Oak Press. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information: Century Oak Press, 33 Tuscarora Ave., Beaufort, SC 29907.

  ISBN-1466219779

  EAN -9781466219779

  Primary Category: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / P.I., General

  Country of Publication/ United States

  Language/ English

  Search/ Keywords: mystery; P.I.; suspense; thriller

  Authored by GC Smith

  Century Oak Press

  Author’s Note

  The Lowcountry of South Carolina is a unique and splendid geographic phenomena made up of approximately sea level barrier islands, salt-water estuaries, fresh water rivers, bays, sounds, salt marshes, cypress swamps, and live oak, slash pine and palmetto forests. And, of course, the Atlantic Ocean.

  Warmed by the Gulf Stream, the Lowcountry's climate is semi-tropical. Hot humid summers, mild, often warm, winters. Seasons are marked by the changing colors of the salt grasses (the dominate spartina alterniflora or marsh cordgrass and the lesser spartina patens or salt meadow cordgrass); delicate chartreuse in the early spring; rich Kelly green in the heat of summer; silvery, purple-gray in fall; and dormant brown for the short, two month winter. The Lowcountry sky is an incredible blue, reflecting the ocean's waters. Spectacular sunsets last forever, while sunrises are a momentary flash from dark to daylight, but no less spectacular than the sunsets. Night skies are dotted with a trillion stars. The Lowcountry is perfection.

  In this, THE CARBON STEEL CARESS, a work of fiction, I've taken liberty with the South Carolina Lowcountry. And I do it no justice. Moultrie Bay and Moultrie County are figments of my imagination, as are Lady Caroline and Saint Catherine's islands. So to are the characters, men and women, black and white that people the book. For this necessity my apology. There is no way to improve on the real Lowcountry or its people.

  For Jack

  Who taught me a few things

  about novel writing

  R.I.P. buddy

  THE CARBON STEEL CARESS

  Century Oak Press

  “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.”

  Sigmund Freud

  “A man, who as a boy, believes that he has lost his mother's favor; ... well, that is an entirely different matter.”

  GC Smith

  PROLOUGE

  Lady Caroline Island

  Moultrie County, SC

  May 17; late night

  She steered the Lexus GS 400 onto a newly scraped and packed sand road. Platinum shafts from the cars halogen lights pierced the midnight black of the road that cut through a thick slash pine stand. She checked her image in the car’s visor mirror and smiled. “Soon,” she whispered, “soon. Minutes now, Cynthia darling.”

  Thunder, followed by a jagged flash, reverberated through the Lexus. The lightning illuminated a rare six foot long indigo snake, thick as a man's forearm, crossing the road. She braked for the serpent, allowing it to pass, and as it disappeared into pinewoods she turned the car into the driveway of a vacant house with a for sale sign planted on its lawn. She backed and turned the Lexus around, parking beneath a century oak, the car concealed, well back from the road. She quick checked her hair and her makeup taking a moment to spritz White Diamonds, Cynthia's favorite, behind her ears and on her throat. She brushed back long strands of raven hair with the backs of fingers and smiled, satisfied.

  She left the Lexus and followed the front yard path, turning right through the yard. She found a gap in a Crepe Myrtle hedge that separated the vacant house from an adjoining property. She crossed through a garden of the vacant home and moved to the other property. The clouds opened to a downpour as she stepped up onto a covered side porch and to a glassed paned door. “Mud room,” she whispered to herself. “Go in here.”

  She produced a lock pick and set to work with sure expertise. Moments later tumblers lined up, the lock clicked. Slowly, silently she twisted the doorknob and nudged the door open. She entered, pausing to listen. A gentle tick of a Grandfather clock and the hum of air conditioning were the house's only sounds. She made her way through the darkened first floor and upstairs to the bedroom level.

  In the dim glow from a lighted electric bedside clock she could see a shape on the bed. Cynthia Echols, her former prep school roommate at the exclusive Saint Dunstan's Academy in Charleston, lay sleeping under an embroidered percale sheet, curled in fetal position.

  She gently peeled back the sheet so as not to disturb the sleeping beauty. A compressed smile formed on her lips.

  Cynthia, in a pale pink silk chemise and matching silk tap pants. Lovely. Just as lovely as when they had been adolescents, experimenting with love. Not at all like old crones that she had done in Texas and Louisiana simply for their gemstones. Not that she would overlook Cynthia's diamonds.

  She stood silently, looking down on the sleeping woman, listening. Hearing Cynthia's rhythmic breathing. Remembering. Wishing she could go back in time. She forced herself to attention; to the here and now; to the reason that she had come to this house. She wiped a tear from her left eye and plunged the stiletto between Cynthia's breasts, screaming “weak, faithless bitch.” She pushed the blade up under the sternum and into the sleeping woman's heart.

  Cynthia Echol's struggle was almost nonexistent; her life was gone in seconds. Payback was complete. Cynthia's life in trade for her killer’s incarceration as an adolescent in the Robichard Psychiatric Institute. A life for a year.

  Cynthia could have had been faithful. She could have kept her mouth shut. She should never have told the headmistress about their liaison. She should have never revealed what they had shared together in bed. There had never been reason to tell. But, Cynthia had been weak and her lover had paid for that weakness. Now, finally, it had come time for Cynthia to pay.

  She wiped the stiletto's blade and moved to the bedroom wall safe and Cynthia's diamonds.

  BOOK ONE

  A KILLING GAME

  CHAPTER ONE

  Old Point Section

  Moultrie Bay, SC

  May 17, P.M.

  Johnny Donal, P.I. pushed the stool back and rose from in front of the workbench. His rising dumped the tortoiseshell cat from his lap to the floor. The cat meowed loudly, annoyed. Donal reached down and chucked the furry creature under the chin. The cat skittered away, stopped, and gave Donal an over the shoulder disdainful look.

  Donal's fishing and drinking buddy, A.J. Hook, Chief Deputy in charge of homicide for the Moultrie County Sheriff's Department carefully inspected the version of a Flats Dredger that Donal had just tied. “A work of art, Johnny boy. Truly a work of art. Touch with the goldfinch feather is genius.” Hook carefully placed the fly in its compartment in the clear plastic box on Donal's workbench. He picked up his glass and drained it. “How do you do those bitty little knots?”

  “Figure it out if you can, Dick Tracy,” Donal said, laughing.

  “No way. I'm a ten thumb. I buy my flies.”

  Starting for the kitchen, Donal hollered over his shoulder. “Another beer?” The cat followed Donal and reached under his trouser cuff, giving him a sharp clawed poke in the ankle. “Ow, dammit,” Donal yelped. “Okay Cat, I'll get you baloney.” The cat rubbed against Donal's ankle and
purred like a miniature Evinrude.

  Hook answered, “Last one. Gotta get on home and get some shuteye.”

  Donal pulled chilled Dos Equis for himself and A.J. and a slice of beef baloney for the cat from the huge Zero King refrigerator-freezer combination that was built in to a wall of his just completed gourmet kitchen. The old house was getting there, becoming a home; exterior reconstruction completed, his bedroom suite and the kitchen finished. The rest of the building, a partially restored late eighteenth century Lowcountry townhouse, was time worn heart pine floors and plaster-less lath. Despite the building’s screams for refinishing and their numerous days off for fishing and hunting, Donal was sure that Freddy McAllister and his construction crew would get the job done. Donal would have a complete restoration before senility set in, maybe.

  The cat, a gourmand, not a gourmet, gobbled the baloney and meowed for more. To her, almost any food was good; baloney was heaven.

  Coming back to the workshop room Donal swept his fly tying tools into their box and stowed them and the box of flies on a shelf. “You gotta tie your own, A.J.. Other peoples’ flies don't tempt the spot tail,” Donal said.

  “Horseshit, Donal,” Hook retorted with force more than actual conviction. He secretly envied his friend's fly tying skills, but dammed well wasn't about to admit it. “I got some flies from a guy named Thorn on Key Largo last year. Funny looking boogers made from beer bottle caps, yarn, feathers, and beads. Guy said bonefish go ape for them. Hell, I caught everything with them. Spot tail, cobia, king mac, even tarpon.”

  Donal chuckled, “So much for my personalized fly theory,” he said, then getting serious asked, “Getting anywhere with the razor murders?”

  “No, dammit,” Hook replied. “Every time we think we may have something he changes the type of victim. First he mutilated two single women and left the bodies in their cars. Those two were tattooed bimbos; they hung out in singles bars and had nasty reps. We figured we'd find the crazy through bar employees or patrons but nada, drew a blank. Then he did a young married woman in her home. She was an active in community affairs and a churchwoman. Her reputation was impeccable. Now he's back to singles. But these young women were still different. Coeds from USC Moultrie Bay, two of them. Honor students and each had tons of friends. Good kids; all American types. There was nothing in their lives that put them in harms way. Nothing in their social lives that couldn't be accounted for.

  “It's like the killer selects his victims at random. Five murders of three entirely different types of women.”

  “Pattern less pattern.”

  “You can say that again. We have open cases that go back as far as a year with absolutely nothing pointing to the perp. Now I'm forced to spend precious investigation time with p.c. crap. First thing in the morning I get Sheriff McBride, County Executive Parsons, the Medical Examiner, and a couple of wild-eyed psychiatrists from the Medical University of South Carolina. We're having a sit down so the MUSC shrinks can give us a psychological profile on the murderer.”

  “Whose numbskull idea is that?”

  “Who else; our County Exec, dear Drucilla.” Hook shook his head, a weary gesture. “After we waste time with the shrinks we get to bare our breasts to the fourth estate still one more time. Make ourselves fools again.”

  “I don't envy you.”

  Hook snorted. “It’s horseshit. The case is screwed up enough without the posturing politicos stickin’ their oars in. They're drivin’ me around the bend. More and more I find myself thinking about hanging it up.”

  “Don't b.s. me,” Donal said, handing his cop friend a beer. “You ain’t gonna quit and you know it.”

  Hook sighed, “Maybe not, but these murders are a bitch.” Hook stopped, mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste. There have been more murders in Moultrie County this year than the whole of the previous decade. “Drucilla’s on the warpath. Scared shitless that she'll catch hell from her political opposition. So she's chewin' my ass.”

  Donal tipped the bottle back and took a pull of the beer. “Comes with the territory.”

  “Easy to say, hotshot. Private dicks don't have to worry about politics.”

  “No, we worry about meeting a payroll and covering the bills. Bitch about your job to hell and back, your business will never fall off.” Hook coughed up a weak laugh. “Your business ain't so bad.”

  “I got lucky, A.J.”

  “Ain't that the truth.” Hook drained his beer, pushed back the chair, and rose. “I gotta go, Johnny. Man, I wish I could duck that meeting. Jackass psychiatrists are all I need. Worse yet a couple of reps from the State Law Enforcement Directorate are coming in after we meet with the shrinks and the press. How about you sitting in with the SLED guys.”

  “I don't know, A.J.”

  “Hey a favor. You were a state agent once.”

  “Long time ago my friend.”

  “Not so long that you won't know the two I'm meeting with.”

  Donal raised an eyebrow.

  “Ellerby and Faulkner,” Hook said, disgust evident in his tone.

  “Hmm. Brad Ellerby. Director of SLED's special agent division, self promoting prick. I don’t know Faulkner.”

  “As big a prick as Ellerby?”

  “Guys like Ellerby and Faulkner are why I'm glad I left the State police.”

  “Yeah, I hear you Johnny, but if they see an old SLED hand like you at the meeting they'll go easy with the crapola. You being there'll help me out. It'll insure that the C.E. and the Sheriff don't put too much stock in those SLED pricks’ nonsense.”

  “I doubt that A.J., but, what the hell, I'll be there.”

  “Thanks Johnny.” Hook hitched trousers over his gut and tried to suck it in as he opened the door. He paused with his hand on the door knob and asked, “When's Victoria going to show her pretty face?”

  “I don't know. She's still lecturing at the USC main campus in Columbia. She won't get back home to the Moultrie Bay campus till the guy she's filling in for gets back to Columbia. Can't happen soon enough.”

  Hook grinned, face furrowing into laugh lines. “Lady's not just a beauty, Donal. She's a smart one. Don't let her get away.”

  Donal folded his arms. “Whoa, not to fast. I've only known Victoria a couple of months.”

  Hook brushed a hand through his head of snow white hair. “Don't be a procrastinating fool, Johnny. She'd make a lovely mother. And that's a fact.”

  “Christ, Hook. You playing matchmaker is bad enough. Now you want to make me a father. Give me a break.”

  “I have your best interest at heart, my friend.”

  “Lookin’ out for you hapless buddy John. Ha!”

  Donal took the glasses and empty beer bottles into the kitchen, smiling as he thought about Hook's complaints and his advice. For years Hook -the most confirmed of confirmed bachelors- had been trying to marry him off to one female or another. Donal's smile broadened. With Victoria, Hook might get the job done.

  Three weeks since Donal had seen her ---

  --- Three months since Donal had stopped to assist a motorist who had tied a white handkerchief to the antenna of a faded, sixties vintage, red MG. The car was on the shoulder of SC 170, a busy arterial that led from the southern border of the State, past Hilton Head Island, and over the Broad river to Moultrie Bay.

  As Donal pulled his pickup in behind the disabled car, the driver's door opened and a pleasant looking but plain woman, dressed in a gray business suit, got out. “I don't understand, it just stopped running.” She looked from the disabled car to traffic racing by. “I was lucky that I could get it to the shoulder. I tried to restart it but it just coughs and dies. The gas pedal feels funny. Can you call a tow truck for me?”

  “Sure, but let me take look first.” He walked up to the car asked her to pop the hood. He peered into the cramped engine compartment, saying in a voice muffled by the hood, “I see the trouble.”

  A simple snap link that connected the throttle control to the carburetors had
separated.

  Donal reached in and snapped the linkage back together. He walked back to the driver's door and said, “Try to start it.”

  She hit the starter and the little four cylinder engine coughed, caught, and settled to a purr.

  “Stomp on the gas pedal a couple of times.”

  She revved the engine twice and it coughed and stalled. Donal returned to the front of the car, looked under the hood again, and came back to her. “It's not going to work. Problem's not serious but your gonna have to get the car towed. Throttle linkage is just too worn to hold together. Come on, I'll give you a lift. Where to?”

  “The Moultrie Bay campus of the University of South Carolina; I have a meeting.” Looking at her watch, she added, “I'm almost late now.”

  Donal drove her into town and two days later she called him at his office and asked him to have a drink with her, so she could say thank you properly.

  He accepted.

  Donal left his office and the piles of casework papers that clogged his desk and screamed for attention. He drove to his home and changed from a business suit to slacks, a white Egyptian cotton shirt open at the throat, and a summer weight sports jacket. Now, he walked through Moultrie Bay's palmetto and live oak lined downtown streets annoyed with himself for wasting time, preoccupied with thoughts about his casework. He still had an hour to kill before meeting Victoria. Not enough time to go back to the office but a lot of time to waste. Damn, he thought, why in hell did I agree to meet her.