Carter
“My manuscript in progress.” Gramps drops a fistful of pens and pencils into a cup, then pulls out a laptop, spiral notebooks, and a plastic folder stuffed with newspaper clippings, magazine cuttings, and printed photographs.
“Yup.”
Gramps nods. “Mostly.”
“Do you have lots more of it to write?”
“A few final chapters. But first I need to finish some research. I’ll do that on the ship.”
Carter’s memory slides back to just over a week ago, when he and his mom arrived at his grandfather’s house in Los Angeles to collect him for their flight to Europe.
While his mom and Gramps fussed in the hallway over luggage, Carter wandered down the dimly lit passage toward the bathroom. On the way he’d noticed the office door ajar. Of course he couldn’t resist peeking inside.
The blinds were drawn in preparation for his grandfather’s time away, but sunlight still filtered softly through the slats, illuminating dust motes. The muted light made the study seem magical, mysterious, like a storybook full of secrets.
Carter cocked an ear. The adults were still arguing down the hall. Slowly, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
A dark wood desk hulked beneath the window.
Bookshelves lined two walls, crammed to the ceiling with paperbacks and hardcovers.
An old leather chair sat under a lamp, and notepads and papers were piled on the ottoman in front of it.
More papers were scattered on the floor beside the chair.
But Carter’s gaze went straight to the opposite wall.
It was covered with photographs, yellowed clippings, Post-it Notes, charts, lines connecting everything—it looked like a crazy mind map, or a crime board.
A primitive energy gripped Carter’s chest. His heart beat a little faster. This was potentially a real live mystery waiting to be solved. He moved closer, hungry to see if it might be a serial killer case his gramps was investigating. Maybe something old and very cold.
Up close it definitely resembled crime whiteboards he’d seen on TV cop shows, except bigger, messier.
Red lines connected old photos; yellow lines led to maps with colored pins and circled cities.
The photos, Carter realized, were of victims. They had birth and death dates marked below them.
Men and women. Mostly young. The majority looked like hippies with long hair, big beards, bell-bottom jeans, beads.
One photo showed a van painted with flowers and a peace sign, a blond guy with a bandanna standing beside it.
Next to the victims’ photos, Gramps had pinned newspaper clippings with headlines describing drownings, stranglings, disappearances, and even burned and chopped-up corpses found in places named Bombay, Goa, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Pattaya, Ko Samui, and Phuket.
One article mentioned two victims had throats cut to the bone, their heads almost decapitated.
Their bodies had been found burned black and twisted and still smoking in a farmer’s field in Kathmandu.
Also listed beside the victims’ photos were the names of the countries they came from, including the United States, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Australia, Turkey.
Two French victims were even policemen from Paris.
There was a photo of monks draped in orange cloth, a line of prayer flags at a temple, a big snow-covered mountain behind them.
Another image showed a glamorous couple with a monkey.
The woman had a skinny face and dark-blonde hair.
She wore tinted glasses. The man also wore tinted shades.
His shirt and pants looked tight. The woman sat at a table piled with money and passports and bottles of beer.
The man stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder. They looked like movie stars.
Another photo showed the same couple at a table with cards and a tray of jewels, but this time they were in the company of a very dark-skinned man with thick black hair almost down to his collar. A Post-it beside the image read Sanjay Lohar. Alive?
On tippy-toes Carter studied a jungle photo labeled Chanthaburi. Beside it was an image of the Eiffel Tower, another with a temple in India, and what looked like an old prison.
“Carter!” His mother’s voice rang down the hall. It startled him. He shouldn’t be in here. He sensed he’d stumbled into something dark and secret.
“Carter? Where are you? The Uber is almost here.”
Hurriedly, before his mother could find him, he dragged a chair over to the wall and climbed onto it. On tippy-toes he studied the photo of the man at the top of the crime wall.
There was one word below it. Underlined.
Vincent.
Below were two blank squares that showed only a question mark on each. Under them a note read:
Accomplices:
A-C L. Deceased 1975.
SL—vanished in Pakistan 1975. Last possible sighting Berlin, 1979. Nothing since. Presumed murdered by Vincent? No proof.
Beside the picture of “SJ” was a fresh photo cut from the same brochure Carter and his mom had received. An image of the MS Black Orchid.
Gramps had scrawled something beneath it, but it was too small, too high for a short eight-year-old to read.
“Dammit, Carter! What in heaven’s name are you doing in here?” his mother snapped.
He almost fell off the chair, scrambled down, and hastened toward her. Her face was thunderous. Her gaze flicked to the crime wall. She cursed under her breath before saying in an icy voice, “Our Uber is here.”
Now, as Carter watches his grandfather tuck his empty satchel beneath the desk in their suite, a tiny seed of suspicion unfurls in his belly.
That crime wall in the Los Angeles office is somehow tied to this Black Orchid trip, and to a killer named Vincent locked in a Nepalese prison, and to two accomplices—one of whom might still be alive, given the question mark, and mention of “no proof.”
Maybe this isn’t just a cruise for Gramps to reconnect with Carter and his mom. Or to lecture about his books. Maybe that crime wall in LA is why they visited the old Greek prison in Athens, where Gramps told him about the Bikini Killer called Vincent.
Gramps has unfinished business.
A few missing chapters.
And something left to hunt.
This for sure is all going into his List of Suspicious Happenings to Be Investigated by Carter J. Frost.