Dark Passage

FOURTEEN

‘A ship on the high seas is as good as lawless.’

60 Minutes, ‘Ships of Shame,’ April 8, 2012

When Julie finally awoke, it was nearly dinnertime. The first thing she asked for was a glass of water.

They had transferred her to a hospital bed, so I cranked up the headboard. She managed to take a couple of sips from a water bottle, while I busied myself adjusting the pillow more comfortably behind her head. Julie patted the sheets, lifted the blanket, then gazed around the room in apparent confusion. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in the ship’s clinic, Julie.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘We were hoping you could tell us that.’

Julie closed her eyes, squeezed them tight and rocked her head from side to side against the pillow. ‘I don’t remember.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘What happened to my clothes?’

Georgina leaned a hip against the edge of the mattress and laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘They found you down in the recycling area, near the ship’s kitchens, Julie. Do you know how you got there?’

Julie rubbed her forehead and winced. ‘No! I’ve never been to the kitchens.’

‘We came to pick you up at the Tidal Wave after the pizza party, but you weren’t there. What did you do after the pizza party, Julie? Please think!’

Julie screwed up her face until her eyes almost disappeared. ‘It’s kind of a blur. I remember that it was early, so Katie and I decided to go to the bar and get a smoothie or something.’

‘Julie, you have to tell me the truth. You weren’t drinking again, were you?’

Julie’s eyes grew wide. ‘Alcohol? No, mom, honest! I had a coconut smoothie, I swear! Katie had a Coke.’

I glared at my sister. Upsetting Julie wasn’t going to get us anywhere. ‘The doctor suspects that somebody put a drug in your drink,’ I said, trying to defuse the situation. ‘Something that made you pass out. Did you see anybody do that, Julie?’

Julie sucked in her lower lip and shook her head.

‘Did you leave your drink unattended?’

‘No, never.’ In spite of the direction of the conversation, she brightened. ‘Nobody could put something into the drink anyway, Aunt Hannah, because it was in a plastic glass with a cover on it, you know, with a little hole for the straw!’

‘That leaves the bartender, I suppose, or one of the waiters,’ I suggested.

Julie folded her arms and frowned. ‘No way. Not Wes. Not Ally.’

Wes had to be Wesley, but who was Ally? The female bartender we talked to wore a name tag that said ‘Kira.’

‘His real name’s Aloysius,’ Julie explained when I asked. ‘He’s from the Philippines.’ She turned to Georgina. ‘He’s really nice, Mom, and he sends all his tip money back home to his mom. She lives in Olongapo, near where the naval base used to be.’

Dad had been in the navy, so I knew all about ‘Gapo,’ a city on Subic Bay near the naval base that the U.S. had turned back to the Philippine government following the Vietnam War. From what I understood, it was now covered with volcanic ash from the eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo in 1991. What surprised me was that Julie knew so much about Gapo. Clearly she’d spent time chatting with Ally.

‘When you left the bar, did Katie go with you?’ Georgina asked.

Julie looked blank. A single tear rolled sideways down her cheek. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What I want to see is the security camera footage,’ Ruth said. ‘That should tell us who was sitting with who and when. I wonder when we can talk to Officer Martin? Surely he’s had a chance to review the tapes by now.’

‘He told me he’d be looking at the tapes and getting back to us as soon as he had anything to report, and I trust him to do that,’ I said. I felt as if I’d lived a hundred years since that morning, and now that Julie was safe, all I could think about was sleep. ‘Georgina, if it’s OK with the doctor, I think we should get Julie back to her own bed. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m not thinking too clearly just now. We could all do with a little sleep.’

In the middle of the night, Julie was shaking me awake. ‘Aunt Hannah, I remember something.’

I sat up in bed, not sure for a moment exactly where I was. I squinted at my niece in the dim light. ‘Where’s your mother, Julie?’

‘She must have taken a sleeping pill. I tried to wake her up, but she just groaned and rolled over. I have to tell somebody before I forget.’

‘Sit up here next to me, then, sweetie. I’m listening.’

Julie crawled onto the narrow bed and snuggled up against me. We leaned against the bulkhead and, although it was comfortably warm in the room, I covered our legs with the duvet. ‘It’s all fuzzy, like a dream, you know? But, there was this man,’ Julie began.

My heart did a somersault, so I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘He was wearing this black shirt with a little squiggle on it.’ She pointed to her left breast. ‘Right here, like on the pocket? I’ve tried and tried to remember his face, but it goes all weird on me. But I know the man had a ball cap on.’

Well, that narrows it down, I thought. Every man on board the ship must have a polo shirt and a ball cap in his suitcase, and half the women, too.

‘Did the ball cap have any writing on it?’

Julie looked puzzled, then her face brightened. ‘I was going to see the dolphins!’

That brought me up short. ‘Dolphins?’

‘Well, I missed the dolphin trip, Aunt Hannah, so when he said there was a place on the ship where I could see dolphins…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘That was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?’

I put my arm around Julie and drew her close. ‘You’re the bravest girl I know, Julie. And what you’ve just told me is important. I think we need to wake your mother up now, and talk to Officer Martin. You probably don’t remember him, but he’s the head of security on this ship.’

Julie’s lower lip quivered. ‘Do I have to, Aunt Hannah?’

I nodded. ‘We don’t want the man who attacked you to get away with it, do we? What if he tries to do something to another girl? You were very lucky to get away.’

Julie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’

The room stewards liked to surprise passengers by folding towels into whimsical animal shapes. On our first night at sea we had giggled over an orangutan clipped to a pants hanger. That night, Pradeep had transformed my towel into a floppy-eared puppy and had propped my sunglasses up on its nose. I’d set the ‘dog’ on my bedside table and I grabbed it now, sending the sunglasses flying. I pressed the towel into Julie’s hands, and she held it to her mouth as she raced to the bathroom.

All the time I was dialing the telephone I could hear Julie retching miserably. There’s nothing worse than being sick to one’s stomach; any chemo survivor will tell you that. As I listened to Julie moan, I fantasized about going after whoever had done this to my niece with a pair of rusty garden shears, then dumping him – and his parts – overboard.

When I got through to Officer Martin, he agreed to meet us in our cabin right away, even though it was nearly one-thirty in the morning. While I waited, I shook Ruth awake and explained about Julie, then I went to the cabin next door to try to rouse my younger sister.

The four of us were sitting on the beds in the stateroom I shared with Ruth when Officer Martin arrived along with Molly Fortune who, judging from the notebook she was carrying, was there to listen and take notes.

We asked Julie to repeat what she’d told me earlier.

Hands folded on her lap, Julie obliged; then she bowed her head and studied her thumbs. ‘He said he was taking me to see the dolphins.’ She looked up. ‘You don’t have dolphin tanks on the Islander, do you?’

Martin smiled sympathetically. ‘No. The owner has deep pockets, but not that deep.’ After a moment, he asked gently, ‘When you went to see the dolphins, Julie, where did this man take you?’

‘There was this room, like a living room, with chairs and a coffee table and a sofa and things.’ She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips as if trying to clarify the vision.

‘Was there a window?’ he pressed.

‘I don’t remember. I suppose there was a window.’

‘Was it a room like this one?’

Julie’s head wagged from side to side. ‘No, I said like a living room. It didn’t look like a normal cabin. And, wait! There was candy on the table! The kind that comes in the gold box!’ She inspected her thumbs again, put one to her mouth and chewed on the nail. ‘I can’t believe I was so stupid!’

‘Gold box?’ Martin asked. Apparently he’d never bought the women in his life posh chocolates.

‘Godiva,’ Ruth and I answered simultaneously.

Impatient with waiting for Martin to get around to telling us about it, I asked, ‘Have you been able to review the security tapes, Officer Martin?’

‘We have. They captured Julie and her friend going into Breakers! and placing their orders at the bar. We see the two girls sitting at a table near the window, then three boys come up and join them…’

Georgina exploded. ‘Crawfords, I’d bet my life on it! I am going to kill…’

Martin raised a hand to silence her. ‘None of the other teens touched Julie’s drink. We’re sure of that. We’ve located Julie’s friend, Katie, and interviewed her. She confirms everything that we can see on the tapes. The boys join them at the table, the waiter delivers the drinks, everyone is laughing and having a good time, the boys leave, then, according to Katie, Julie says she feels funny and has to go to the bathroom.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ Julie said.

‘On the way to the restroom, Julie goes around the corner and moves out of camera range. We have security cameras in all the lobbies, Mrs Cardinale, and Julie never got to the restroom, not on deck ten nor on any other deck. But what we did notice before she vanishes is that Julie is already weaving and staggering, holding on to the handrails for support. Ketamine is fast-acting, so we know that the drug had to be introduced into her drink by someone – either crew or another passenger – while Julie was at Breakers!’

‘How about the glass she used?’ I wanted to know. ‘Do you know what happened to it?’

Martin frowned. ‘It went out in the trash, along with literally thousands of others exactly like it.’

Georgina jumped to her feet. ‘Call the F.B.I.,’ she demanded. ‘We’re U.S. citizens – they are obliged to investigate.’

‘I’ve already done that,’ Martin said. ‘Federal agents will be meeting the ship when it docks in Baltimore the day after tomorrow.’

‘You’re going to let everybody off the ship?’ Georgina stopped pacing. ‘The pervert who attacked my little girl, and who knows how many other little girls just like her, is simply going to walk… off… this… ship?’

‘We will be turning all the evidence we’ve collected so far over to the F.B.I., Mrs Cardinale. They’ll have a complete manifest – the name, address and photograph of everyone on board Islander right now – and that includes passengers, staff and crew. We’ve made copies of all relevant security tapes. They’ll have the rape kit and the results of the tests we ran on Julie when she was brought in to our clinic, along with her clothing. And I can assure you that the place where Julie was found has been photographed and secured so that nobody can disturb it until the F.B.I. has completed their investigation.’

‘The place where Julie was found has been secured, not the place Julie was attacked,’ I pointed out. ‘Because we don’t know where she was attacked, do we?’

‘No,’ Martin said simply. ‘Nor can we simply assume that because she was found in a crew area of the ship that a crew member was responsible. The room she described might belong to a passenger, or to one of the staff. There are any number of ways your niece could have ended up down on I-95. Our key card system is reliable, but not infallible.’

‘I have a question about the security tapes,’ Ruth chimed in after a respectful silence to let what Martin had just said soak in. ‘This didn’t happen to Julie in broad daylight. She had to have been taken somewhere private, where nobody could see. And Julie said the cabin had a living room, so it had to be bigger than this cabin, surely. Wouldn’t that narrow it down?’

‘Islander has over one hundred cabins larger than this one,’ Martin explained gently. ‘Doubles, and some smaller singles, too, some with living room configurations.’

I picked up from where Ruth left off. ‘But all the cabins are directly off corridors, right? So at least one of the security cameras must have picked up on a guy in a black polo shirt wearing a ball cap and leading a young girl down the hall!’

Martin flushed. ‘We don’t have cameras in the stateroom corridors, I’m afraid. Surveys have told us that passengers consider it an invasion of privacy.’

I blew a raspberry. ‘Why? Because they’re bed hopping in the middle of the night?’

‘Something like that. Or fighting, or throwing up on the carpet, or pouring beer over someone’s head.’ Martin sighed. ‘Alcohol is too readily available. It doesn’t make my job easy.’

Georgina wasn’t impressed. ‘As far as I can tell, this had nothing to do with alcohol, did it? What I want is for you to find this pervert and lock him up. You have a brig on board for this purpose, I presume?’

‘No, ma’am, we don’t, but until we get into port, this guy – whoever he is – isn’t going anywhere.’ He heaved himself to his feet. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?’

‘Thanks, no,’ I said after a moment of silence had passed. ‘Georgina?’

My sister, straight-lipped, shook her head.

Officer Martin opened the cabin door and stepped into the hall. Molly Fortune started to follow then paused, seized my hand and spoke to me, fast and low. ‘You might want to contact an attorney,’ she said.

‘OK, but why?’ I whispered back. ‘Didn’t you call the F.B.I.?’

‘Oh, yes, he called the Feds. But that first call? It was to Boca Raton.’

Now I was thorough confused. ‘What’s in Boca Raton?’

‘Phoenix Cruise Lines’ headquarters,’ she said ominously, then slipped out the door.

After Martin and Fortune left, the four of us sat in silence for a while, thinking. There were calls to make, to be sure, but until the Islander reached land we were pretty much on our own.

‘Well, ladies,’ I said at last. ‘The way I figure it, we have little more than twenty-four hours to track this bastard down. And I think I know just where to begin.’