Vanish by Tess Gerritsen Page A

stood in silence for a moment, squinting off over Hingham Bay. A motor cruiser
    rumbled by, churning up a wake that made the boats rock on their moorings and set halyards
    clanging on masts.
    “Had you ever seen the woman before?” Moore asked.
    “Nope.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “A gal who looks like that? I’d sure as hell remember.”
    “And no one in the club recognized her?”
    Skip laughed. “No one who’ll admit to it.”
    Gabriel looked at him. “Why wouldn’t they?”
    “Well, you know.”
    “Why don’t you tell me?”
    “These guys in the club . . .” Skip gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, you see all these boats
    moored out here? Who do you think sails them? It’s not the wives. It’s the men who lust after
    boats, not the women. And it’s the men who hang around here. A boat’s your home away from
    home.” Skip paused. “In every respect.”
    “You think she was someone’s girlfriend?” said Crowe.
    “Hell, I don’t know. It’s just that the possibility occurred to me. You know, bring a chickie
    here late at night. Fool around on your boat, get a little drunk, a little high. It’s easy to fall
    overboard.”
    “Or get pushed.”
    “Now wait a minute.” Skip looked alarmed. “Don’t you go jumping to that conclusion. These
    are good guys in the club. Good guys.”
    Who might be banging chickies on their boats, thought Gabriel.
    “I’m sorry I even mentioned the possibility,” said Skip. “It’s not like people don’t get drunk
    and fall off boats all the time. Could’ve been any boat, not just one of ours.” He pointed out to
    Hingham Bay, where a cabin cruiser was gliding across the blindingly bright water. “See all the
    traffic out there? She could’ve tripped off some motorboat that night. Drifted in on the tide.”
    “Nevertheless,” said Moore, “We’ll need a list of all your members.”
    “Is that really necessary?”
    “Yes, Mr. Boynton,” said Moore with quiet but unmistakable authority. “It is.”
    Skip gulped down the rest of his vodka. The heat had flushed his scalp bright red, and he
    swiped away sweat. “This is going to go over real well with the members. Here we do our
    civic duty and pull a woman out of the water. Now we’re all suspects?”
    Gabriel turned his gaze up the shoreline to the boat ramp, where a truck was now backing up to
    launch a motorboat into the water. Three other vehicles towing boats were lined up in the
    parking area, waiting their turns. “What’s your nighttime security like, Mr. Boynton?” he
    asked.
    “Security?” Skip shrugged. “We lock the club doors at midnight.”
    “And the pier? The boats? There’s no security guard?”
    “We haven’t had any break-ins. The boats are all locked. Plus, it’s quiet out here. If you get any
    closer to the city, you’ll find people hanging around the waterfront all night. This is a special
    little club. A place to get away from it all.”
    A place where you could drive down to the boat ramp at night, thought Gabriel. You could
    back right down to the water, and no one would see you open your trunk. No one would see
    you pull out a body and toss it into Hingham Bay. If the tide was right, that body would drift
    out past the islands just offshore, straight into Massachusetts Bay.
    But not if the tide was coming in.
    His cell phone rang. He moved away from the others and walked down the pier a few paces
    before he answered the call.
    It was Maura. “I think you might want to get back here,” she said. “We’re about to do the
    autopsy.”
    “Which autopsy?”
    “On the hospital security guard.”
    “The cause of death is clear, isn’t it?”
    “Another question has come up.”
    “What?”
    “We don’t know who this man is.”
    “Can’t someone at the hospital ID him? He was their employee.”
    “That’s the problem,” said Maura. “He wasn’t.”

    They had not yet undressed the corpse.
    Gabriel was no stranger to the horrors of the autopsy room, and the