“Damn,” he said, feeling that familiar flutter of anticipation in his stomach.
He braced the soles of his rubber boots against the side of the hull, untied the rope, and immediately felt the weight of the cage. The boat listed, starboard side, the davit pole tipping down toward the water. Schill estimated he’d pulled in sixty feet of line, which still left about twenty feet to go. Something didn’t seem right though; the rope was not perpendicular to the water, but angled at forty-five degrees, which usually indicated a snag.
Whatever it was, it was coming up first, his basket somewhere beneath it. That worried him. If he’d snagged a big bed of seaweed, or a lost boat anchor, and had to cut it free, he could end up cutting his rope and losing his pot. Good-bye, profit margins.
He gave another pull, the muscles of his thighs, arms, and shoulders now all burning. Sweat trickled down his forehead into his eyes and he shook it away. Finally, a crab pot broke the water’s surface. Though hard to see, it appeared rectangular. His pot was an octagon. Either his line had become entangled with the line of a pot set close by, or he’d snagged a rogue pot.
He tied off the rope and carefully slid across the bench seat. The davit pole lowered another six inches. Reaching carefully for the rope, afraid he might tip the boat over, he grabbed it and dragged the pot close enough to reach the cage, holding it close. With his free hand, he retrieved the flashlight and directed the beam over the contents.
The pot looked full, but with what?
He saw seaweed and starfish, but also a few crabs scurrying about, feeding.
Then he saw the hand.
CHAPTER 2
Tracy Crosswhite parked her Ford F-150 facing north on Beach Drive SW, pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail, and quickly wrapped it in a hair tie. She didn’t wear a ponytail often anymore. At forty-three, she didn’t want to come off as one of those women still trying to look a perky twenty-three, but at this hour of the morning, she didn’t feel perky and didn’t much care what she looked like. She hadn’t showered, and she hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup.
She opened the notepad app on her cell phone and scrolled to just below her first entry. She’d dictated the time she’d received the call from Billy Williams, her detective sergeant at the Seattle Police Department’s Violent Crimes Section. She hit the microphone button and said, “Time: 5:45 a.m. Parked on Beach Drive SW near Cormorant Cove.”
Williams had called roughly twenty minutes earlier. Dispatch had received a 911 call about a body in Puget Sound, and the skull of death hung from Tracy’s cubicle—literally a fake skull the detectives hung on the cubicle of the homicide team on call, in this case, Tracy and her partner, Kinsington Rowe.
Williams had said he was still gathering facts, but someone had reported finding the body near Cormorant Cove, which was just a few miles from Tracy’s rented home in West Seattle’s Admiral District. She’d beat everyone to the scene except the responding officers. Their patrol cars sat parked across the street facing the opposite direction.
Tracy stepped down from the truck’s cab. A slice of the fading moon in a pale-blue sky grinned at her. The temperature, already pleasant, meant another day of unpleasant heat. With six days above ninety degrees, this June was shaping up to be the hottest on record.
Tracy dictated another note. “Weather is clear, no appreciable wind.” She checked the weather app on her phone and said, “Fifty-three degrees in West Seattle.”
A Saturday morning, the beaches and elevated sidewalk would soon be teeming with dog walkers, joggers, and families out for a stroll. Encountering a dead body on the beach would put a real damper on the start to their weekend.
She grabbed her SPD ball cap, threaded her ponytail through the gap for adjusting the size, and tugged the bill low on her forehead. Next came the 50-SPF sunscreen, which she rubbed on her arms, neck, chest, and face. She’d had a scare two months earlier when her doctor noticed a discoloration near her collarbone during a routine exam. A subsequent trip to the dermatologist revealed skin damage, but no cancer. The joys of getting older—crow’s-feet, belly fat, and applying sunscreen before going outside.