Last Exit in New Jersey Read online

  Last Exit in New Jersey

  Last Exit in New Jersey

  C.E. GRUNDLER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2011 C.E. Grundler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-241-4

  This is a work of fiction. While the geographic locations both on and offshore are accurate, all characters and incidents described are products of the author’s warped imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or deceased, to any business establishments, locales, or to any actual events is purely coincidental. Additionally, certain areas of the Hudson River may not be as deep as implied. It is advisable to consult current charts before navigating these or any other waters, especially for the purpose of dumping bodies.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are a few people who are due much thanks; each of you helped me along at some point in this process, and for that I am grateful. To start with: Mom, Dad, and Rachel—your feedback and priceless comments were invaluable through that first draft. Walter, for the RF guidance and all your input. For all the motivation, Frank, and Felicia for far more reasons than I could ever list. Diane, my editor on the high seas, for all your blunt and brutal comments as well as your ceaseless encouragement. To Eleni Caminis, who saw the potential in my writing and provided me the opportunity and assistance to move forward. And to my editor, David Downing, for all your knowledge and professional guidance in streamlining my story and writing.

  Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my late friend Butch.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  1

  03:14 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  WHERE AM I?

  13:40 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I’M HEADING OUT

  13:57 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I DON’T WANT TO GO THERE

  14:49 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I DIDN’T BREAK IT

  15:21 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I FORGOT

  15:35 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I’VE GOT TO WATCH WHAT I SAY

  TIME, DATE, POSITION UNKNOWN

  I’M AN ADULT?

  TIME, DATE, POSITION UNKNOWN

  I’M NOT A STALKER

  17:05 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  I’M HAVING FUN NOW

  01:15 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I WANT TO, REALLY, BUT…

  08:23 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I’M KEEPING THINGS IN BALANCE

  19:14 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I HAVE MY REASONS

  19:29 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I’M ONLY DOING THIS FOR ANNABEL

  20:46 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I’M OFF TO THE HOUSE OF DOOM

  22:32 SUNDAY, JUNE 27

  I’VE LOST IT

  01:03 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS

  01:37 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  IT APPEARS I’M INSANE

  02:45 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  I’M INSANE AND I’M BOATLESS

  2

  04:14 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  I TRIED

  04:46 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  I PROBABLY NEED MY HEAD EXAMINED

  23:48 MONDAY, JUNE 28

  I’M JUST LISTENING TO THE VOICE IN MY HEAD

  23:58 TUESDAY, JUNE 29

  WHERE THE HELL IS BIVALVE, NJ?

  00:15 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30

  I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE,

  02:05 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30

  I’M RUBBING OFF ON ANNABEL

  19:19 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30

  I’M NOT SURE ANYMORE

  02:02 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M SORRY

  02:12 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M SO CONFUSED

  02:21 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M GOING TO COMBUST

  04:39 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M BACK AT THE GATES OF HELL

  20:47 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M OUT OF HERE

  21:57 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  I’M PRETTY SURE I’M DEAD

  05:07 FRIDAY, JULY 2

  I’M SOGGY

  22:52 FRIDAY, JULY 2

  I’M NOT SURE

  08:14 SATURDAY, JULY 3

  I’LL BE DAMNED!

  08:32 SATURDAY, JULY 3

  I CAN’T DO IT

  TIME, DATE, POSITION UNKNOWN

  I’M BACK ON GARY’S SHIT-LIST AGAIN

  20:40 SATURDAY, JULY 3

  I’M GAINING ON THEM!

  23:39 SATURDAY, JULY 3

  I HOPE THIS WORKS

  00:14 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I’M SCREWED

  00:27 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I’M HURTING

  03:56 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  3

  I DON’T HAVE A CLUE

  12:49 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I’M BALLAST

  15:34 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I’M LOSING IT

  21:20 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  21:40 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  IT’S ALL MY FAULT

  22:32 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  23:49 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I’M “IT”

  23:45 SUNDAY, JULY 4

  I DON’T MEAN THOSE!

  00:24 MONDAY, JULY 5

  I WANT TO DIE

  01:03 MONDAY, JULY 5

  I’M DONE

  02:16 MONDAY, JULY 5

  I’M DOING IT AND THIS TIME NO ONE’S STOPPING ME

  NO WAKE ZONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  03:14 SATURDAY, JUNE 26

  38°39’51.72”N/74°34’27.40”W

  NORTH ATLANTIC, 23 NAUTICAL MILES

  SOUTHEAST OF CAPE MAY, NJ

  Alone at the helm, shivering in the predawn darkness, Hazel Moran listened to the soft rush of water as Witch cut through the offshore Atlantic swells. Guided by compass she headed southeast by south while radar monitored the empty spread of ocean for unwanted company. Beyond the dim glow of the instruments, everything on deck remained black; not even running lights revealed the small schooner’s position. The boat surged forward under full sail, in perfect balance with the broad waves and a steady southwest wind. The air hung heavy with a dampness that clung to every surface; Hazel knew by afternoon violent thunderstorms would rumble across the Jersey shore.

  She switched a flashlight on and aimed the beam astern; it pierced the blackness behind her. The weather-beaten wooden dinghy still followed reluctantly in Witch’s wake, tugging against the towline like a sacrificial lamb sensing its fate. It hadn’t sunk yet, but rode low as water seeped through loose seams.

  Hazel checked her watch then shut the light, letting the darkness close in. Dawn was an hour away, and her twenty-first birthday in two weeks; there’d been moments during the previous evening when she wondered if she’d see either one.

  Normally Hazel enjoyed the quiet solitude of the night watch, miles from shore, surrounded by an inky emptiness while the rest of the world disappeared. Normally the worn mahogany wheel would have been comforting in her hands, but adrenaline still raced through her and she fought to keep from shaking. Normally there wasn’t a dead body onboard.

  The deceased cargo offered one benefit: now her father had to believe her. When she’d first insisted, two nights before, that someone was out to kill her, he’d said she was just being melodramatic. Actually, “full of shit” was
how he put it, words usually reserved for her blue-haired, multi-pierced cousin Micah. She should have been honored.

  “I think you’ve been reading too many Travis McGee mysteries,” her father said when she tried to explain how her ancient Miata had ended up parked beneath thirteen feet of water. He didn’t buy her story of ditching the car in the river to escape masked gunmen in a Taurus. Even their friend Joe agreed she was pushing the limits of credibility.

  Her father alternated between relief that she’d survived her long drive off a short pier and frustration that she held to such an elaborate lie. Just tell the truth, he insisted. Admit she was screwing around and miscalculated one of her high-speed drifting skids into the lot. It was a maneuver she’d honed to perfection and yet another driving technique her father forbid, arguing she’d either get herself killed or raise their insurance rates. Sometimes it was hard to tell which worried him more.

  “Stop lying!” he had said, over and over. He wouldn’t listen.

  But now she had proof. She nearly said, “I told you so,” but the words caught in her throat. Far better not to push the issue, not when both her little driving mishap and the corpse in her cabin were almost certainly tied to Micah’s recent disappearance.

  Witch plunged into a wave, taking spray over the bow as she drifted off course. Hazel turned the wheel and watched the compass as she returned to a heading of 139 degrees. Her destination was deep water, the deeper the better. The depth finder confirmed the ocean’s bottom, well over one hundred feet below, still dropping away.

  The companionway door banged open and Hazel jumped, heart pounding. Light spilled across the deck as Joe came above, his shaved head and thick arms glistening with sweat that made the octopus tattoo encircling one arm come alive. He staggered to the rail, gulping mouthfuls of fresh air. Her father emerged after him, his long hair slick and shoulders heavy with exhaustion. He studied Hazel. “You okay, hon?”

  She nodded stiffly.

  “How much water do we have?”

  Hazel checked the depth finder. “One fourteen.”

  “That should do. Head up.”

  She swung the wheel until Witch pointed into the wind and slowed to a stop, rolling impatiently, broad sails slapping in protest. Joe hauled the plywood dinghy alongside and secured it as the small boat banged and thumped against Witch’s hull. The men went below, each returning with a pair of heavy, lumpy black trash bags. They seemed bulkier than Hazel expected, considering the various body parts they contained. It was likely they’d been weighted down with some anchor chain to prevent anything from floating up. One by one the bags were loaded into the dinghy, nearly to the point of swamping.

  Her father stepped to the helm, checked the radar to be sure no one was near, then turned his scrutiny to Hazel. She’d cleaned up earlier, scrubbing herself with cold seawater until her skin stung, but it still felt as though she was covered in blood. She shuddered, trying to block the memory of the warm slickness on her hands and soaking her cotton nightgown.

  Her father frowned, smoothing back his dark hair. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m cold,” she said, her throat painfully tight.

  They both knew better, but he only nodded and took the wheel.

  “You’re not dressed warm enough. Go grab a jacket.”

  Hazel looked toward the companionway and hesitated.

  “It’s okay. Everything’s cleaned up.”

  And so it was. Not a trace of the grisly mess remained: the dismembered body, the blood, her sheets, blankets, mattress, her Jay and Silent Bob poster, even the quilt she’d spent last winter neatly stitching by hand—it had all been removed. Only the “NO WAKE ZONE” needlepoint above the cabin door and some books on upper shelves had been spared. Bleach vapors burned her eyes and throat and she choked, panic building at the memory of waking to a hand clamped over her face, the suffocating grip smothering her screams. Her father had been playing poker at Joe’s while this stranger stood leaning over her bunk, a smoldering cigarette pressed in his mouth, steel-blue eyes gleaming. She’d struggled to breathe and move away, but he pushed all the harder. He moved in tighter, told her if she screamed it would be the last sound she made, then lifted his hand. Paralyzed, she didn’t even whisper.

  Her choice, he said. Tell him where Micah was, or suffer first and then tell him.

  She didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

  “Haze?” her father called down. He leaned into the companionway. “You okay?”

  She shook her head, pulled on a sweatshirt, and raced back to the fresh air on deck. Leaning over the rail, she peered down at the bags. Her quilt was in one of them, blood-soaked and bundled around assorted pieces of the late Jim Kessler of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Beyond a name in a wallet, she had no idea who he was. There’d been no car in the boatyard parking lot; he’d slipped up-river aboard the dinghy found beside Witch, the same one he currently occupied. Her father untied the dinghy, now barely visible in the water, and it sank under the waves, swallowed by blackness.

  Joe took a drag on his cigarette. “And that’s the end of that.”

  But it wasn’t and they all knew it.

  Her father slumped back against the stern rail and turned to Hazel. “Take the wheel and bring her about. Let’s go home.”

  She returned to the helm, swung the rudder hard to starboard, and waited as Witch responded. The sails ceased their banging as they filled with wind, and the boat heeled and gained speed. Hazel finally began to relax as Witch got into her groove, racing up and gliding down the wide swells, no longer held back by the dragging dinghy and unwanted cargo.

  Her father turned to Joe. “When we get back, I want to haul her car out.”

  They moved away to trim the sails, their tense, hushed words carried off with the wind as they snugged the sheets. The boat responded by picking up a bit more speed.

  Hazel watched the tip of Joe’s cigarette, the burning ember floating in the darkness. The cigarette between Kessler’s lips had glowed the same way. It was her choice, he’d said, almost as though he hoped she wouldn’t cooperate. Tell him where Micah was, or he’d make her an example so Micah would understand who he was dealing with.

  He leaned close and clamped his hand over her mouth again. He took a drag off the cigarette and exhaled. Acrid smoke filled the tiny cabin. His middle finger forced her lower eyelid down even as she tried to squeeze her eyes closed. “This is just for starters,” he said, the glowing tip of the cigarette moving toward her tearing eye.

  Pinned to the bunk with that vile hand smothering her, she let out a muffled scream as she twisted her head violently from side to side. His grip tightened, she felt the webbing between his thumb and forefinger within her mouth, and she bit down hard, fighting her revulsion as her teeth sank into the tough flesh. He bellowed and jerked his hand away.

  “That how it’s gonna be?” His bloody hand curled into a fist, then opened again and snapped forward to grip her throat. His wet grin bloomed in the dark. “You just made things a whole lot worse for yourself.” He loomed closer, the burning cigarette held forward like a weapon.