At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(62)

“Yes,” said Maclean, “which means that now, Jason can use the hangar as the kill and cleanup site. It’s perfect.”

“He would have had to take his victims somewhere else to dispose of them,” said Verraday.

“But where?”

“Robert Pickton’s family owned a forty-acre farm in Port Coquitlam. That’s how he was able to hide the bodies of so many women.”

“There was a picture of Jason with his mother at the controls of a floatplane,” said Maclean. “Professor Lowenstein mentioned that they used to fly floatplane charters.”

“Right, and if the Griffin family had a lot of money at that time, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume they had a vacation property some place.”

“I can do a search of land titles. It’s all electronic nowadays. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Verraday vacated his seat so that Maclean could come around and use his desktop computer. She punched in the surname and a string of properties came up, both for ones currently owned and ones sold within the last several years.

“Look at this,” said Maclean. “There are only three recent property transfers in the state listed for a Fred Griffin. One is the family home in Fremont, which, as you can see, was transferred from Jason’s father to Jason’s mother when they divorced four years ago. Fred also owned a condo that Jason inherited after his father died last year. The third one is a twenty-acre waterfront vacation property up on Suquamish Island, in the San Juans. It was sold off less than a month before Fred died.”

“You know anything about the San Juans or Suquamish?”

“Never been there. Let’s check it out.”

Maclean Googled it and in seconds had some results.

“No ferry service to Suquamish,” she said. “And no airstrip. The only way in is by private boat or—get this—floatplane. Only about thirty full-time residents. Very lonely, very remote. The kind of place where something terrible could happen to you and nobody would ever know. Fred inherited it from his father, so his ex-wife couldn’t touch it as part of the divorce settlement. But as next of kin, Jason would have been in line for it. If his dad hadn’t sold it first.”

“But then the father dies suddenly a few weeks later. I wonder if the new owner has received any generous offers from mysterious strangers wanting to buy it?” asked Verraday.

“I’ll check on that,” said Maclean. “And I wonder what he died from. The obituary suggested a mental health organization for donations.”

“Suicide?”

“If that’s the story, I’m going over that coroner’s report with a fine-toothed comb, and if anything’s out of place, I’ll have the case reopened. I want to find out if the father had any help dispatching himself. And I’ll speak to the new owner and the real estate agent,” said Maclean, “find out if Jason’s tried to buy back the property. There’s something else I’ve been wondering too.”

“What’s that?”

“When you asked Jason Griffin if the numbers matched on the engine and frame of his Dodge Charger, I saw a flicker of something on his face. I’m going to run Jason through the DMV registration system, make sure that car’s registered in his name. And if it is, I’m going to find out if that’s the original engine. You’re the vintage car expert. The VIN code would indicate what the original engine is, right?”

“Yes, it would.”

“If it’s not the original, we should get the serial number off it and find out where it came from. Might be hot. Now, how about Cody North’s death? What are your thoughts on it? Forensics says there were no fragments of skin or clothing under the fingernails. Jason’s lawyers will use that.”

“If Cody North was close enough to the edge of the trail to go down without a fight, or to not see it coming, then if there was someone else there, it had to be someone he trusted, someone he’d let get close to him. Someone like Jason.”

“But Jason was in Port Angeles. He’s got the proof. Unless he hired someone to kill Cody for him.”

“Not necessarily,” said Verraday. “I was thinking about that. Port Angeles is only two and a half hours away by car. He would have had just enough time to call Cody, arrange to meet him, drive down, kill him, and drive back in time to fly that plane into Seattle at eight AM.”

“But he had the car rental contract that showed only twenty miles on the odometer.”

“You know, if I was looking for an alibi for where I was when someone was killed, and the place was driving distance from where that killing took place, I would order a bottle of wine from room service. Then I would take a glass down to the beach in front of the hotel where everybody would see me. Then just to be really certain I’d been noticed, I’d leave my rental car parked as close to the office as possible, so everybody could see it too, see that it was parked there all night.”

“And then?”

“Do they have more than one car rental agency in Port Angeles? There’s no law against anybody renting more than one car, is there?”

“You’re saying he rented a second car in Port Angeles, then drove it down to Issaquah and back?”

“It’s possible.”

“You have a devious mind, James.”