the killer noticed that a pool of blood was forming underneath the woman’s body. He quickly went back inside the boat, pulled the top sheet from the bed and came back out to the deck. With a tremendous effort, he freed the woman from the anchor and wrapped her in the bed sheet, trying to mop up as much of the blood as he could while he worked. Then he went back to the railing and finished untying the anchor rope knot. He bound the woman’s body with the rope, and eased her and the anchor into the lake on the starboard side of the boat – just as he had rehearsed in his mind.
The killer let out enough nylon rope to set the anchor in the mud at the bottom of Horseshoe Hole – with the woman’s body bound into the rope just above the anchor, approximately 10 feet below the lake’s surface. He temporarily wrapped the free end of the anchor rope to the starboard railing, while he went inside the boat to check the GPS and the depth sounder one more time..
The GPS unit at the helm read 44o 08.625’ North Latitude, 88o 49.700’ West Longitude, and the depth sounder read 12 feet. Still in Horseshoe Hole, and still at 12 feet. Right.
On his way back through the galley, the man took a heavy toolbox from the galley closet, and an empty bucket from beneath the sink.
He returned to the aft deck, tied the toolbox to the free end of the anchor rope, and eased the box and the rest of the rope into the water. As the box and the rope sank quickly to the bottom of Horseshoe Hole, the killer scooped buckets of water from the lake and washed the woman’s blood off the deck. In minutes, there was no obvious evidence that the woman had ever been on the aft deck of the boat.
The killer washed and dried the bucket in the galley area, and then he made the bed in the aft cabin. Satisfied that he had removed all traces of the woman, he went back to the helm.
There, the man pushed the boat’s two black shift levers into their “forward” positions, and the boat began moving again. Then the man turned the steering wheel left and eased the two red throttle handles forward, so the boat turned away from Horseshoe Hole and moved swiftly back to the harbor area.
An hour later – around 4:45 a.m. – the killer was driving to Oshkosh, where he would spend the next two days in a hotel room that he’d been occupying since the beginning of the previous week. He had left the boat where he had found it, with all the lines and cables connected as they had been before, and with the boats’ keys sitting on the pilothouse table with a typed note that read:
To Father Keen’s Crew –
Here are the keys you’ll need…Father Keen already has all the paperwork…
Hope you guys get a good price for the boat in your auction next week…
If you need anything more, call the Harbormaster at (920)-555-6243…
As the killer drove, he smiled to himself. Perfect, he thought, Absolutely perfect.
************
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
