Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap...
Bootsie could move fast with his peg leg; he could all but dance.
Malachi lunged forward, slamming Bootsie’s weapon, and the sword went flying across the room. Malachi staggered back, wearied by the fight.
“Stand down, Blue, stand down!” he cried.
Bootsie seemed to falter. Abby realized he was reaching down to his thigh—to grab a knife from its sheath.
She had a clear shot.
She fired as he drew the knife, about to throw it into Malachi’s heart.
The sound was deafening; the recoil sent Abby flying back, her arm in agony.
Bootsie froze. Then he crashed to the floor, his peg leg moving at an awkward angle as his twisted body fell.
Malachi rushed to Abby, drawing her into his arms, loosening the ties that bound her wrists. As he did, they heard sirens.
A floodlight suddenly lit up the interior of the boathouse.
“You are surrounded. Put down your weapons. Come out with your hands up!” someone ordered over a megaphone.
Bianca gave a strangled sob and Malachi started toward her.
Thankfully he didn’t have to leave Abby.
Police were pouring in, Jackson Crow and David Caswell at the head of the group.
Since Bootsie was dead, it was difficult to put together the complete history of what had happened—where his madness had begun and exactly how he’d managed all his feats of kidnapping, disappearances and murder.
David Caswell told them they might never know; it was sad to say, but there were people who might remain missing forever—and there were bodies that might never be found.
A search of his house led them to a stairway, which went to the cellar. There they discovered a pocket door that opened into the labyrinth of tunnels—and his hidden store of frock coats, breeches, hats and pirate weapons.
As the Krewe and David Caswell sat around the table at Abby’s house on Chippewa, they learned that the police had been examining other unsolved cases they’d had over the years. They couldn’t be sure. But Bootsie might have started his murder spree as much as a decade before. Back then, he might have lived out his fantasies at a slower rate. His wife had been alive then; she’d probably kept him from totally indulging in his longing to be a pirate captain who kidnapped women and tried to get them to fall in love with him. But they’d always wonder about a number of other situations. They’d uncovered a drowning victim in their records from ten years earlier. Foul play had been suspected, but the case had grown cold. Two years later, the body of a young woman, decomposed beyond recognition, had been found south of them, off North Hutchison Island in Florida. There were missing-person cases that had never been solved in the following years. So, yes, it was possible that Bootsie had begun killing slowly—and had then escalated into his mad world of piracy, seizing young women and killing them at a more frantic rate.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Abby said. She was glad to be at the table; she’d stayed at the hospital the night before because of the concussion she’d received. “Why didn’t Helen recognize Bootsie? He approached her with a business card identifying him as a man named Christopher Condent. But Helen knew Bootsie. And he didn’t use Blue’s name. He used the name of a different pirate.”
“I was in the behavioral unit for years before the Krewe,” Jackson said. “I’ve taken so many courses on the human mind that I should have answers. But I don’t believe any of us have ever gotten to the core of what can make a man—or woman—so twisted. How they can be insane and yet behave sanely. He dressed up and hid his identity so well she didn’t know him.”
“She said there was something familiar about him—that she felt she should have known him,” Malachi said. “That’s why I suspected one of the men who hung around the Dragonslayer. That, and the fact that every victim had eaten at the tavern.”
“But Dirk would have been on the ship at the same time the so-called businessman, Christopher Condent— aka Bootsie Lanigan—was on board. And Dirk didn’t recognize him, either.”
“That just goes to show how skilled he’d become at disguise,” David remarked.
“But Bootsie had a peg leg!” Abby said. She looked at David and then murmured, “Oh. Right.”
“Exactly,” David said. “He had his peg leg, which he preferred to use. But we know he also had several newer prosthetics.”
“I knew that, too.” Abby nodded. “He claimed to like his peg leg best, said he hated the newer so-called ‘real’ prosthetics.”
“A peg leg is best for a pirate,” Kat said quietly.
“Playacting.” Will shook his head. “It can become far too real.”
“In Bootsie’s case, definitely,” Kat said. “And he was taking the fingers from his victims because it was part of—of being a pirate?”
“Obviously we’ll never be able to ask him,” Jackson replied, “but whether much of what we hear is legend or not, it is known that Blackbeard—among others—didn’t hesitate to cut off a man’s finger when he wouldn’t hand over a diamond ring. This might be a detail Bootsie added later on. The earlier potential victims weren’t missing any fingers.”
They all talked about their theories, what they could and couldn’t have done.
David was remorseful over the fact that they searched ship after ship—boat after boat—and never thought to look in the old ramshackle boathouse. A records check, of course, showed that it belonged to a corporation owned by a holding company Bootsie was involved with.
“After Abby pulled Helen Long from the water, and after Helen’s testimony, we were all convinced he held the women on a boat or ship.” Angela smiled at Abby. “Thanks to you, though, two women lived. Helen and Bianca.”
“Yeah—but I got myself hit on the head,” Abby said.
“Only after I fell down a hole,” Malachi reminded her dryly.
“Bianca will live. She’s traumatized, and it’ll take time. But Helen’s already out of the hospital, and Bianca...well, at least she kept her finger,” Kat murmured. “And, hopefully, the police will soon discover the identity of the one girl who remains a Jane Doe.”
“It’s good to know that, for Bianca, the future has real promise. For one thing, she has Roger, who hasn’t left her side since he was allowed in,” Jackson said. “We’ll take all the good we can get.”
Abby felt her phone vibrate; she knew it signaled an email and meant to ignore it. She liked sitting here with the Krewe. They’d be leaving soon, and although she’d be happily accepting the position offered to her, she wouldn’t reconnect with them for a while. They were in Savannah now, and she didn’t want to be distracted.
She glanced at the new email, anyway—and gave a little cry of delight. The others went silent.
She smiled. “Sorry. I just got a note from a friend of mine on the city council. She had her assistant go into the records after I wrote to her, and they’re going to see that the gravestone in Colonial Park Cemetery is repaired. The proper information will be carved on it. The name had been damaged when the stone was vandalized by soldiers when Savannah surrendered to General Sherman.”
“That’s great,” Jackson said, a knowing smile on his lips. He looked at Malachi. “Perhaps the two of you would like to go make that statement at the cemetery?”
“Sounds good. Let’s take a walk,” Malachi told Abby.
“One minute. I want to print out this email to bring to Josiah’s folks,” she said, hurrying off to do that.
She and Malachi left the group with the Krewe planning their last evening in Savannah; they’d have a barbecue at the house on Chippewa Square. Will said he thought it was fine for Kat to shop for the barbecue, but someone else might want to do the cooking. Kat was indignant, and Angela did her best to mollify them both; while Jackson watched with amusement.
Abby and Malachi walked the few blocks to the cemetery. It was late afternoon, just as it had been when they’d gone into the tunnels the day before.
