The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(3)

Pryor said, “I’ll walk you in.”

Tracy scribbled her name on the sign-in sheet and ducked beneath the tape. Pryor handed the clipboard to one of the two remaining officers.

Tracy noticed people starting to linger on the beach and turned to the other officers. “Move everyone off the beach and onto the elevated sidewalk. Tell them the beach is going to be closed most of the day. And find out if anybody saw anything or knows anything.” She surveyed Beach Drive, spotting a blue truck with a boat trailer. “After you move them, write down the license plate numbers of every car parked along Beach Drive to Sixty-First Avenue and back down Spokane Street.” She knew the three streets intersected, creating a scalene triangle with Beach Drive SW making up the longest side. It was not unheard of for a killer, if they were dealing with a murder, to come back to the crime scene and watch the investigation unfold.

They moved toward the water. After the cumulative days of hot weather, the beach held a distinct briny smell. A uniformed officer, bent over, hammered a stick into the sand, presumably to tie the other end of the crime scene tape he’d strung to create a U-shaped perimeter.

“We got the call from dispatch at five thirty-two,” Pryor said, her boots sinking into the rocks and making a sound like rattling change. “When we arrived, he was waiting for us by his boat.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Kurt Schill. He’s a high school student here in West Seattle.”

Tracy stopped walking to consider the logs positioned parallel to the water. “Did he do this?”

“Not sure,” Pryor said.

“Looks like a makeshift boat ramp.” She took a couple pictures with her cell.

“He said he was crabbing and his pot snagged something as he pulled it up,” Pryor said.

“A body?” Tracy asked, thinking that would be a first.

“Another crab pot.”

“I thought he found a body?”

“He’s pretty sure he did,” Pryor said. “Inside the pot.”

Tracy looked from Pryor to the boat and beyond it to the taut line. Not an anchor. She’d come to the site predisposed to find a body on the shore, perhaps a drowning or boating accident, what they referred to in the section as a “grounder” or easy play. If the body was inside a crab pot, that changed everything, in a big freaking way.

“Have you seen it?”

“The body?” Pryor shook her head. “Water’s too deep. And I’m not sure I want to. The kid said he thought he saw a hand sticking out from under crab and starfish. Creepy stuff. He towed it back here.”

“A hand or the whole body?” Tracy asked.

“He said he saw a hand. Based on his description of the weight of the pot, though, likely the whole body.”

Tracy reconsidered the young man. She could only imagine the horror of seeing a decomposing body fed on by marine life.

She followed Pryor to the water’s edge. Waves lapped gently over the rocks. The officer establishing the perimeter stood and wiped perspiration from his forehead.

“Thanks for setting the perimeter,” Tracy said. “But we’re going to need it to be a lot bigger, all the way down to those logs and up to the boardwalk. I’m going to ask for a screen to block the view from the seawall, and I’ll need you to set it up when it gets here. You haven’t moved or touched anything?”

“Nothing but a few rocks to drive the stakes,” Pryor’s partner said.

“What about Harbor Patrol? Anybody call them to send out divers?” Tracy asked.

“Not yet,” Pryor said. “We figured it best to leave everything as is until somebody came up with a plan.”

Tracy spoke to the second officer. “Call it in. Tell them we’re going to need them to set a perimeter offshore to keep boats away until we find out what we’re dealing with.” She turned to Pryor. “What was the guy in the boat’s demeanor when you got here?”

“Pretty shaken up. Confused. Frightened.”

“What did he have to say?”

Pryor looked to her notes. “He said he went out early this morning to retrieve his pot down near Lincoln Park. He said he’d set it in about eighty feet of water, and when he pulled it up, it felt way too heavy. When it broke the surface he realized it wasn’t his pot.”

“It’s not?” Tracy asked.

“No. Apparently, he snagged it. Said when he brought it closer he used a flashlight and saw what he thinks is a human hand. Scared the crap out of him. He dropped the cage, and the weight of it nearly pulled his boat over. He managed to tow it back until it grounded, beached the boat. He called 911 on his cell.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“He just finished his sophomore year at West Seattle High and lives over on Forty-Third Street. His parents are on their way.”

“What’s a teenage boy doing up this early?”

Pryor smiled. “I know, right? He said he sets his pots early so he’s not competing with the bigger boats.”

Tracy picked up on Pryor’s intonation. “You don’t believe him?”

Pryor said, “The thing is, it’s not crabbing season yet, not for anyone but the tribes.”

“You know that?”

“Dale and I crab a little. We do it mostly to take the girls out on the boat. The tribes can crab pretty much whenever they want. For everybody else, the season doesn’t open for another week—July second, I believe.”