A Dangerous Identity Read online

  A

  Dangerous

  Identity

  ALSO BY RUSSELL FEE

  Fiction

  The Sheriff Matt Callahan Mystery Series:

  A Dangerous Remedy, Book One

  Russell Fee writing as Russell Ó Fiaich:

  Who You’ve Got To Kill

  Poetry

  A Dash of Expectation

  A

  Dangerous

  Identity

  A Sheriff Matt Callahan Mystery

  Russell Fee

  Boreas Press

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations, associations, institutions, locals, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright© 2019 by Russell Fee

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  Published by Boreas Press, Oak Park, Illinois

  ISBN: 978-0-9985119-3-1 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-0-9985119-4-8 (paperback)

  Cover design by Erik Offerdal

  Cover photo © by Joan Flynn Fee

  E-book formatting by Maureen Cutajar

  For

  Heather, John, and Patrick—who fill my heart with unbounded joy

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

  It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.

  —Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  Chapter 1

  The girl didn’t have her head on right. That was for sure. Seeing how it lay by her side, face down in the sand, as if trying to hide from the sight of her body, which was nude and posed on the beach like a pole dancer about to spin, one leg thrust out, the other crossed over at the knee, back arched, an arm flung above what would have been her head. She had already attracted an eager audience when Sheriff Callahan arrived.

  He nudged his way through the crowd until he was at the body. “Everyone, move back, way back,” he said and knelt on one knee. He hovered over the body without touching it, surveying it and the sand around it a moment before he called out to the onlookers. “Okay folks, show’s over. Everyone, clear out.” He stood and eyed the remaining gawkers to make sure they knew he was serious. They did and began reviewing the photos and videos they had taken on their cell phones as they walked away. Callahan figured the poor girl would be on Facebook and YouTube within seconds. He crouched down on his haunches for a closer look.

  Apart from her decapitation, the girl had not died well. Deep slashes crisscrossed her body nearly severing her limbs and exposing her internal organs. Callahan was amazed she didn’t lose more than her head. As he took a closer look, a shadow snaked over him and settled across the body. Callahan turned and looked up. Dr. Carl Remy was staring down at him. Remy held half a sandwich in his right hand and a rolled, grey blanket under his left arm. He bent down and took a bite of his sandwich. Callahan heard the lettuce crunch.

  “Hmmm,” said Remy. “Boating accident. Probably spun through the props of a yacht, judging by the size of her wounds. Either fell overboard or was diving, I would guess. Probably fell overboard. That would explain the lack of clothing. Wild parties take place on some of those yachts. I’ll check her for drugs and alcohol. Here, cover her with this.” Remy tossed the blanket to Callahan. “Might as well protect what little dignity she has left if the ghouls start sneaking back for another look before the ambulance gets here.” Remy nodded toward the people down the beach, most of whom were watching them.

  Callahan stood and shook the blanket open to its full length with a quick snap and let it float down, guiding it over the girl. “You got here fast,” he said.

  Remy took the last bite of his sandwich and wiped his hand on his trousers. “I was in the area having lunch with a friend when Julie called and said you wanted me over here—fast. Came right away.”

  “Thanks,” said Callahan. “I don’t know how long she’s been here or how long between the time she was first discovered and someone finally called the station. Around fifteen minutes ago, Julie got an anonymous call. That’s all I can tell you.” He swept his hand over the body. “From the look of things, a crowd gathered here for a good while. The sand has been disturbed all around so it’s impossible to tell if she was dragged here or washed up from the lake. There were high winds and waves last night.” Callahan took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his bare hand. He had begun to sweat. “A bit unusual to have her severed head next to her body, don’t you think? If she washed up on the beach, you wouldn’t expect her head and body to have stayed together in the rough water.”

  “Unusual but not impossible,” said Remy. “If a yacht ran her over not far from shore, the waves may have pushed her onto the beach before her head washed away from her. Also, if she was wearing clothes, maybe the shreds entangled her head and kept it with her body in the water long enough for them both to wind up here.”

  Callahan gazed down the beach. “
Then where are the shreds of clothing?” he asked and wiped the sweat again from his face.

  Remy shrugged and said, “You look a bit green around the gills. You okay?”

  Callahan ignored the question and said, “Are you good on your own for a few minutes? I want to question some of our audience; see if anyone knows something that might help us find out who she is and how she got here.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Remy, laying his hand on Callahan’s shoulder.

  “What?” said Callahan, twisting toward him.

  “Aren’t you going to turn her head around and look at her face? Maybe we’ll recognize her,” said Remy.

  “Well, I was hoping that . . . seeing as you’re the county medical examiner . . .,” Callahan didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Oh, I get it now. You want me to do it. That’s why you got me here so fast. Fine,” said Remy. He fixed Callahan with an unsympathetic look and pulled a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket. He stretched them over his fingers as he lowered himself above the girl’s severed head. “Let’s just examine the skull first,” he said and began parting the hair over the rear and top of the skull. “Doesn’t appear to be trauma of any kind.” He placed a hand on either side of the head. “Upsy-daisy,” he said and raised the girl’s face out of the sand. He rolled her head over until it was on its side and, still holding it between his hands, rotated it with three, quick, delicate tosses until it faced up. Then he gently laid it back onto the sand.

  Callahan and Remy stared down at a face that held none of the horror its owner had experienced. Her facial muscles were not slack but relaxed, her eyes were gently closed, her lips held the last trace of a sweet smile. She looked as if she had just received a cherished compliment.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s Susan Gibbons, the kindergarten teacher’s aide at the school. What the hell was she doing on a party yacht?” said Remy.

  * * *

  Callahan left Remy alongside the body to perform a more thorough onsite examination, take pictures, and wait for the ambulance while he took names and questioned people on the beach. It became obvious that he wouldn’t get any more information from the crowd about the body than he had gotten from his own observations, but he extended the questioning for as long as he could. The truth was that he felt strangely affected by the scene and glad to be away from it. Certainly, there was the revulsion and accompanying waves of nausea at the condition of the corpse, but he’d seen death in enough forms in his previous life as a homicide detective with the Chicago Police Department to handle that. Perhaps it was her youth or the way her body had betrayed her in its odd dismemberment and public humiliation. Or her peculiar serenity after what must have been bedlam. Or the thought of how much her family would suffer at her gory debut on social media. Maybe at his age death was becoming too familiar, too close. He couldn’t put his finger on the cause, but the feeling was unfamiliar and unpleasant.

  Callahan considered the change in him since coming to the island and wondered if his current mood had anything to do with it. Seen on a map, Nicolet County formed a speck thirty-five miles off the west coast of Michigan in the middle of one of the Great Lakes: tiny, remote, and insignificant to all but those few who lived on the island. He included himself among those few. He had come to think of himself as an islander now. Horribly mutilated and disfigured in a vicious attack as a detective, he had retreated into a lair of anxiety, despair, and isolation—until the island. The island had given him Julie, Max, Amanda and a life with purpose.

  That was it, he thought. He was experiencing survivor’s guilt. He had found a new life on the island, but the girl on the beach had lost hers in the water off its shores.

  He needed a distraction.

  Chapter 2

  Callahan decided that he needed company to help shake off his malaise and so headed home from the beach to pick up his two favorite companions and take them to one of his favorite spots on the island. It was also one of theirs.

  As he drove, he marveled again how the past and present competed in a horse race for the island’s identity, with the past a full length ahead. The island’s Irish heritage had been preserved for almost two centuries. Each successive generation of the Arranmore fishermen who settled the island had nurtured its roots until those roots were intertwined with the fabric of the island’s culture. Callahan couldn’t turn in any direction without seeing evidence of that heritage in the names of restaurants, hotels, pubs, streets, bays, and people; or in the cemeteries, churches, entertainment, traditions, and even the language of the island. The local moniker of America’s Emerald Isle fit the island perfectly. Ireland was everywhere and had engendered in him a renewed interest in his own Irish roots. When he pulled up to the house and honked, Max and the dog ran out the door.

  * * *

  The path dropped and rose like a crumpled blanket through the trees along the serrated stretch of dunes that spread behind Blue Spruce Bay.

  It was midday, and the leaves split the vertical rays of sunlight into thousands of speckles before they hit the forest floor. Max spread his bare arms out and watched the dappled patterns whisk over his skin as he walked. “Cool,” he said. Then Max stopped. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Why?” said Callahan.

  Max didn’t answer but started walking again.

  “I was just enjoying the quiet,” said Callahan. “I needed to think.”

  “I like quiet,” said Max.

  “I know,” said Callahan.

  Just then the dog appeared on the path at the top of the dune in front of them. It checked to make sure Max and Callahan were still behind it and then turned and disappeared again.

  “What were you thinking about?” asked Max.

  “My job,” said Callahan.

  “I think about my job too,” said Max.

  “Tell me about it,” said Callahan.

  “Ellen. She likes TV. I sit with her. She cries when I must get up. I tell her I will be back, but she still cries. Sarah likes cards.”

  “Do you play cards with her?”

  “Yes. No.” Max shook his head.

  “What do you mean?” asked Callahan.

  “She gives me cards, and I give them back to her. But that’s not playing cards. I try to teach her, but she doesn’t want to learn. Maybe she will.”

  “Tonight, after dinner, do you want to play some cards?” asked Callahan.

  Max looked up at Callahan and smiled. “Sure.”

  “Speaking of work, your shift at the Adult Daycare Center starts in less than an hour. Your mother will be mad at us both if you’re late. We’d better head back to the cruiser,” said Callahan.

  “Yes,” said Max; and, within seconds, the dog appeared at Max’s side.

  The dog and Max had developed some sort of mental telepathy between them. Callahan had to call the dog repeatedly before it came to him, but, without bidding, it showed up whenever Max wanted. Callahan couldn’t figure out how Max did it. Most of the time, Max and the dog were inseparable.

  * * *

  After dropping Max off at the Adult Daycare Center, Callahan decided to stop at the harbormaster’s office on the way back to the station to ask about yachts sailing to or near the island. The harbormaster answered him by taking him out to the end of the pier and pointing into the bay.

  The tiny dark red dot shimmering above the gleaming white of the luxury yacht’s upper deck was visible for almost a mile out to the mouth of the bay.

  “Here,” said the harbormaster, handing Callahan a pair of binoculars, “take a look.”

  Callahan took the binoculars and adjusted the focus until the dot became a figure wearing red pants and a white polo shirt. The figure stared back at Callahan through its own pair of binoculars. Callahan lowered the binoculars and passed them back to the harbormaster. “Who is that?” he asked.

  “The yacht belongs to Anthony Bland. Don’t know who that is on deck, but he’s been there off and on all day. From the way he’s dress
ed, he’s not a crew member so he must be a guest of Bland’s. That means he’s got money, lots of money,” said the harbormaster. “What’s he doing here? Our island, as nice as it is, isn’t exactly a billionaire’s vacation paradise,” said Callahan.

  “He’s not on vacation. He’s probably prospecting,” said the harbormaster.

  Callahan waited for the harbormaster to explain, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned away from the bay and began walking back to his office. “Just heard the radio signal. That’s probably a boat calling in,” said the harbormaster.

  “Wait,” said Callahan, trotting after him. “What’s he prospecting for?”

  “That yacht has been docking all along the Michigan coast for the past month. Jet setters like Bland and his guest don’t take cruising vacations along our Midwest Riviera. They wouldn’t stoop so low. My guess is there’s something out there they think will make them money. They’re looking for it.”

  “Any idea what that might be?” asked Callahan.

  “Not a clue,” said the harbormaster.

  Chapter 3

  The yacht was massive and sat solidly moored inside the bay, impervious to the waves that jounced the other boats tethered to their buoys or anchored near shore. Its great distance from any other yacht was an affront to the usual nautical amity expected from sailors of the Great Lakes and a clear signal to the curious that their attentions were unwelcome. If Callahan needed any confirmation that the owner wanted privacy bordering on isolation, he found it in an inability to communicate with the yacht. Only silence greeted the harbormaster’s repeated attempts to make radio contact.

  Amanda Gillespie, Callahan’s deputy, spotted the first crack in the barrier wall surrounding the yacht. She immediately called him at the station. “Sheriff, a launch from that yacht just dropped someone off on shore who got into a waiting SUV. I recognized the vehicle. It belongs to Tony Bland. You know of him, right?”

  “Of course,” said Callahan. “The island’s first resident startup genius.”

  “And wealthy survivalist whose home here is a veritable bunker. Huge also. I’ve only seen it from a distance. The house is set back a good distance from a wire fence that borders the entire property,” said Amanda.