The Bluewater Wraith. T.R. Boone's Sullivan

      She roams the night – a weary wraith

      Who’s doomed to haunt until she’s found

      With tattered shroud and shattered faith

      And laid to rest in hallowed ground.

      Anon.

      Last August, My Mate and I attended a charity auction in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where we met a man who was selling his houseboat and everything with it.

      He wasn’t an old man – he was only forty-two at the time – so we were curious about his reasons for selling. Was he tired of boating? Frustrated by it? Was it too expensive for him? As curious as we were, we couldn’t ask him why he was selling – because it wasn’t polite, and it wasn’t any of our business.

      But we didn’t need to ask him. He seemed eager to talk about his reasons. He seemed compelled to share his reasons with somebody else, as if he couldn’t quite believe them himself.

      The story you are about to read is his story– a story that begins with one auction, and ends with a second. The only thing we’ve added is what happened before the auctions…

      The murder.

      T. R. Sullivan

      Winneconne, Wisconsin

      ************

      Prologue

      June, 2010

      The Murder

      The killer sat on the plaid sofa in the boat’s pilothouse, patiently waiting for the drug he’d given his victim to take effect. It shouldn’t be long now, he thought, she should be completely under in another hour.

      The entire boat was dark, from the pilothouse at the front – where the killer sat sipping his brandy – to the aft cabin in the rear – where the victim lay sleeping. When the woman moaned softly and turned onto her left side, the man put his brandy down on the table in front of him, picked up a flashlight, and checked his watch. 1:15 a.m. I’ll wait until 2:00 just to be sure.

      As he waited, the killer took a waterproof lake map from the table, opened it, and focused his flashlight on a spot he’d marked in red two weeks earlier – “Horseshoe Hole”, in Lake Poygan. A depth of 12 feet, he thought. Should be 20 feet, but 12 will have to do. He turned his flashlight off, set it on the table, and picked up his brandy again.

      The man sipped his brandy, and reviewed his plans for the woman. He had wanted to dump her body in Lake Butte des Morts or Lake Winnebago – where the water depths were 19 to 21 feet – but he would have needed bridge openings to get the boat into those lakes. That would have meant witnesses – the bridge tenders – and the killer certainly didn’t want any witnesses tonight. That’s why he’d picked Horseshoe Hole in Lake Poygan – it was the deepest patch of water he could reach without worrying about anyone seeing him.

      That’s also why he’d picked an almost moonless Tuesday night – this night – to kill her. So no one would see him. The harbor was very busy on the weekends, but in the middle of the week – Tuesdays through Thursdays – the harbor was always quiet. Very few others were around. And since there would be very little moonlight, his movements would be nearly impossible to see, even if others were around.

      The killer continued sitting in the dark, sipping his brandy, reviewing his plans – and checking his watch.

      Finally, it was time.

      He set his brandy on the table, got up from the couch, and walked across the carpet to the pilothouse’s sliding glass door. He opened the door and went outside.

      He stood on the boat’s bow for a moment or two, looking around the harbor for any signs of movement. The only movements he saw were the other boats in the harbor, swaying back and forth in their slips, and the leaves of the harbor trees fluttering in the evening breeze. Nothing more.

      He turned on his flashlight, stepped off the boat and onto the wooden pier, and walked towards the harbor’s pool house. It was a short walk – less than seventy yards – just across the harbor’s gravel driveway. The only sounds he heard were his own shoes on the wooden pier, then on the gravel driveway, and then on the cement sidewalk leading to the pool house. Nothing else.

      When the man reached the pool house, he checked the swimming pool, the dressing rooms, the kitchen, the laundry room, and the utility room. No one else was around. Everything was quiet.

      Confident his actions would go unnoticed, the killer returned to the wooden pier and unlocked a white dock box that was sitting there. He opened the box and removed a large twin-pronged anchor with several feet of white nylon rope attached to it. Walking down the pier to the boat, the man carried the anchor and the rope to the rear of the boat, where he tied the rope to the railing on the starboard side – the right side – of the boat’s aft deck. He propped the anchor against the deck’s railing – with its two pointed shanks jutting straight upward – and then he walked back on the wooden pier to front of the boat.

      When the killer arrived at the pilothouse door, he stopped to take one more look around the harbor. Satisfied that no one had seen him, the man opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside.

      For a moment, he stood there just inside in the pilothouse, with his back against the sliding glass door – listening for sounds.

      Everything was silent.

      He

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