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“Fair point,” said Jack. “The victim here is no oligarch. But maybe the prosecutor’s theory is that Tyler McCormick was a Vladimir Kava wannabe. Or was operating at some middle or low level in the Kava empire.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that the murder of Tyler McCormick was a way of sending a threat to Mr. Kava.”
“What kind of threat?” asked Imani, adding a nervous chuckle. “That there’s a pirate killer on the loose?”
“No,” said Jack. “A pirate executioner.”
Chapter 39
“It’s called gibbeting,” said Andie.
She was standing behind a lectern at the front of a lecture room inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. Her work on the Boston homicide investigation had led to the first break in the Tyler McCormick cold case in more than a decade. She’d been summoned to FBI headquarters by the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, a specialist FBI department that coordinated investigative and operational support functions of federal, state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies investigating unusual or repetitive violent crimes. Andie’s presentation was to a newly formed multijurisdictional task force that included more than twenty different law enforcement agencies from three different states, as well as INTERPOL. About a dozen men and women were in the room with her. Others participated remotely by videoconference.
On the large projection screen behind her was a grainy reproduction of a nearly three-hundred-year-old sketch depicting the events on Nixes Mate dating back to the early eighteenth century.
“The sketch you are looking at is from 1726,” said Andie. “It was drawn by an unknown witness to the execution of William Fry. Mr. Fry led a band of pirates in the waters around Boston Harbor. He was captured, convicted of piracy on the high seas, and sentenced to death by hanging.”
Andie clicked ahead to the next slide. “This next sketch is by the same unknown artist. The man in the sketch is once again William Fry, but it is post-execution. The body is clearly lifeless. Yet it is erect, as if the prisoner is standing on the waves that lap at his feet.”
Andie zoomed in on the image with her remote control. “If you look closer, it becomes obvious that the prisoner is not standing at all. The body is upright, but only because it is chained tightly to the piling that projects from the shallow waters of the Boston Harbor around Nixes Mate.”
Andie clicked to the next slide, which included numerous images like those of William Fry. “In the eighteenth century, gibbeting was part and parcel of the sentence of death by hanging meted out to pirates by a court of law. Gibbeting was the practice of putting the body on public display after execution. Not on display just anywhere, but in a place where it would serve as a warning to other would-be pirates.”
She continued to the next slide, which was a map of Boston Harbor. “The tiny island of Nixes Mate was the perfect place for gibbeting the corpses of executed pirates. Its location in Boston Harbor made it virtually certain that sailors on any passing ship would see it on their way in or out of Boston. The intent, of course, was to send a clear warning to any sailor who was even thinking about falling into piracy: ‘thisis what will happen toyou.’”
Andie clicked to the final slide. Whatever “yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum” aura that had attended the first part of her presentation quickly evaporated. On the left side of the screen was a crime-scene photograph from the recovery of the body of Shannon Dwyer at Nixes Mate. On the right was a similar photograph from the recovery of the body of Tyler McCormick in Biscayne Bay.
“The forensic similarities between Shannon Dwyer and Tyler McCormick are obvious,” said Andie. “The cause of death in both cases was asphyxiation—which, but the way, was the same cause of death in the hanging of William Fry. Pirates were hanged with a short rope, to increase suffering, so they did not die instantly with the breaking of the neck that comes with a long rope with a thick noose. Convicted pirates were essentially strangled to death.
“As to both Ms. Dwyer and Mr. McCormick, the manner of death was homicide by ligature strangulation. Both bodies were moved after death and put on display by chaining them to a piling in an open waterway. One was in Biscayne Bay. The other was in Boston Harbor. In other words, both were gibbeted.”
Andie paused, interrupted by what sounded like laughter. It had come from the videoconference audience, and it had been more than one participant. The unit chief for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the room with Andie, spoke up.
“Something funny about this?” he asked, annoyed.
There was momentary silence, and then one of the remote participants spoke without identifying himself. “I’m sorry. But is she seriously saying that the common thread in these investigations is that the victims are pirates?”
Andie took a breath and tried not to sound defensive. “Here’s what we know,” she said. “Shannon Dwyer accessed hundreds and hundreds of songs, TV shows, and movies from illegal piracy websites.”
“What about Tyler McCormick?” another remote participant asked.
“We are trying to locate Mr. McCormick’s data,” said Andie. “I understand that Miami-Dade Police captured all of his electronically stored information on a hard drive, which is somewhere in a warehouse in Miami.”
“So you don’t know if Tyler McCormick ever accessed a piracy website,” came the reply by videoconference. “Do I have that right?”
“We don’t,” said Andie. “But the fact is, virtually everybody in Mr. McCormick’s age group and demographic was engaged in piracy of some sort in this period of time around his death. It was an epidemic.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s say it turns out that Mr. McCormick was the biggest music pirate the world has ever known. A virtual Blackbeard. Let’s also say that Shannon Dwyer was the second worst. Let me ask you this question: Did William Fry have the message ‘goodbye girl’ written anywhere on his body?”
“Obviously not,” said Andie.
“Both Shannon Dwyer and Tyler McCormick did, right?”
“Yes.”
“Which raises this question: What does ‘goodbye girl’ have to do with piracy of old or piracy on the internet?”
