Page 24

Jessie tried not to jump to conclusions.

For a half hour now, she'd been sitting on a bench next to the Strand walking and biking path, which touched Burnout Beach. She glanced at her phone. It was 8:15, and the sun had completely set over ten minutes ago. Why wasn't Dawson here?

She zipped up her jacket. Even though it wasn’t that cold, the ocean wind down here was biting. Riddell, standing about seventy-five yards away, was better off. He was leaning against the wall of a beach restroom that afforded him at least some protection from the wind.

Jessie was starting to give up hope when someone biking on the Strand came to a stop not far from her. She was about to tell them to move on, not wanting to spook Dawson, when she realized that’s exactly who it was.

He was wearing a helmet and, inexplicably, sunglasses at night. He got off the bike and appeared to fiddle with one of the pedals. Jessie glanced over at Riddell and gave him a half-wave to indicate that he should come over.

“Don’t look at me while we talk,” Dawson said anxiously, his back turned away from her.

“Okay,” Jessie agreed, “just give my partner a second to come over.”

As Riddell approached, Jessie stood up and walked a few steps toward him.

“Come over here, honey,” she said. “You’ve got to see how moonlight glints off the crashing waves.”

As unpleasant as the prospect was, she reached out to take the detective’s hand, then pulled him close, wrapping his arm around her waist as she leaned in close to him.

"Dawson's on the bike," she said quietly, as if she was whispering a sweet nothing in her lover's ear. "He's still squirrelly, so don't acknowledge him. Let's just admire the ocean like a lovestruck couple."

“If you wanted to get me close to you like this,” Riddell said. “You could have just asked instead of coming up with this elaborate scenario.”

“If you try anything,” she murmured back, “I will break your fingers and dislocate your kneecap, got it?”

“Yes, love,” he replied.

She was glad that her brain—and her bite—were back at full strength again. Now, if she could just get through this case without killing anyone, including her partner, she'd be set.

“So why all the cloak and dagger stuff, Mark?” she asked Dawson while she continued to look straight ahead.

"Because those guys from the yacht club have eyes everywhere," he said as he switched his attention to the other pedal. "I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure they had an investigator sneak into my apartment to check my laptop once. They're paranoid."

“Is this because of the harassment suit you filed?” Jessie asked.

Even though she wasn’t looking directly at him, she could see the guy stiffen out of the corner of her eye.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you found out about that,” he said. “And the answer is yes. I think they’re worried about me breaking the NDA they had me sign as part of the settlement we reached.”

“What are they so worried about you revealing?” Riddell asked, as if the NDA didn’t exist.

“Before I tell you anything,” Dawson said, bending over to study one of the spokes on the bike’s front tire, “I need to know that you’ll have my back.”

“Don’t worry,” Jessie assured him. “That NDA won’t hold up if you’re revealing details of impropriety on their part.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Dawson said, sounding mildly offended. “my days of keeping my mouth shut for those bastards are over. I just want to make sure that I won’t get arrested for anything I tell you.”

“You’ll be fine,” Riddell said way too quickly.

Jessie grimaced at that. They weren't Dawson's lawyers and, as such, were under no obligation to give him accurate legal advice. But depending on what he said, Jessie needed this guy to be willing to say the same things in court. Deceiving him now risked alienating him and making him clam up.

“Actually, Mark,” she said. “Your legal culpability depends on what you’ve done. If you participated in a crime, we can’t promise that you’ll get out of this unscathed. It depends on how serious your actions were. What I can promise is that your assistance in solving two murders could mitigate whatever consequences you’d have to pay. In that situation, we’d definitely go to bat for you.”

Dawson was quiet, seeming to weigh what she’d said.

Under his breath, Riddell muttered, “you’re taking a big chance being straight with the kid.”

She didn't respond, instead keeping her focus on Dawson, who was still silent. Finally, the young man sighed.

“I’m going to trust you,” he said, “because you’re Jessie Hunt. I’ve seen what you’ve done to help people, and I don’t think you’d screw over someone trying to do the right thing.”

“I try not to,” she said.

Dawson looked around. Jessie did the same. There were a few lonely people walking on the Strand and a couple of stragglers packing up stuff on the sand near the water. None of them was within a hundred yards of the three of them. Dawson must have taken comfort in that because he stopped fiddling with the bike and sat down on the bench where Jessie had waited for him to arrive. He was directly behind her and Riddell now. They continued to look away from him, staring at the ocean as if they were a couple besotted by love and nature.

“I worked at the club for about two years,” Dawson said, launching right in. “I really loved it. I did everything from dock maintenance to working in the restaurant. About a year ago, I got switched up so that I did a lot of serving in the bar and eventually bartending. That’s where I encountered the yacht bros—that’s what I called them—up close. They were a bunch of rich, entitled jerks, but they tipped pretty well, so I pretended to be cool with them.”

“Until?” Jessie prodded.

"Until they requested that I work bartending some parties of theirs," he explained. "They'd have these blowouts on their boats, and they wanted to have a bartender on board. They asked me and even though I didn't enjoy their company, I'd say yes. The money was good, and saying no could alienate them, which would hurt me back at the club bar."

“So what happened on the boats?” Jessie asked, doing her best to keep her tone from sounding too aggressive while still pressing.

"I wasn't totally aware of what was going on, at least not at first," Dawson explained. "They'd always bring these girls onboard to party with them. Sometimes they were locals, girls I recognized from around town. In those cases, the guys were pretty well-behaved. But sometimes they would bring girls I’d never seen before, who weren’t from around here. Those nights would get especially wild. Lots of drinking. Sometimes drugs too. And though I didn’t see it, a bunch of sexual encounters.”

“How do you know that?” Riddell asked.

“I could hear them,” Dawson said. “Plus a lot of times, the girls were mostly undressed when they going down to the cabins. Sometimes they were too drunk to walk, and the guys carried them. In a few cases, I think they were roofied.”

“Did any of the girls ever tell you that?” Riddell wanted to know.

“No. It was just odd how quickly they zonked out sometimes,” he admitted. “But one time I ran into one of the party girls at an audition. She was a wannabe actress, and she was trying out for the part of a beach bunny on a crappy show that I was trying to land a role on too. She recognized me and ran out of the building crying. I followed her and asked what was wrong. She said that there was no way that I would catch her saying anything. I didn’t know what she was talking about and told her that. She wanted to know if I was working for the yacht bros, spying on her. I told her the truth, that I just worked some of their parties. She must have believed me because that’s when she told me—she woke up the morning after one of the boat parties and had all kinds of bruising, you know, down there. She said she didn’t remember anything that happened but that the guy she’d been with threatened her.”

“Threatened her how?” Riddell asked.

“He told her that he had all her information—family, job, apartment. In fact, he listed them off from his phone. Then he said that if she breathed a word about that night, he’d destroy her: get her fired and kicked out of her place, have people post on social media that she was a whore, generally ruin her life. She thought I was working for him to check up on her.”

Jessie felt a familiar rush flow through her body. She knew it well. It was the return of her desire to exact vengeance on a perpetrator. She swallowed hard, trying to gulp down the rising fury.

One thing was clear to her. If the medication she’d taken ever had any effect at all on her impulse control, it had worn off. And she realized she was glad.