When Maggie’s ex-husband David had been killed in July, he’d left behind very little other than the people who had loved him.
There was the small insurance policy that had been divided between the kids’ college funds, an old Toyota pickup that Sky now drove, and the little runabout that would one day belong to Kyle.
Maggie opened the throttle up a bit as Scipio Creek opened onto the bay, and steered the boat toward St. George Island, just a few miles off the mainland. Kyle sat on one of the cooler boxes behind her, and Maggie’s heart clenched a little as she looked over her shoulder at him.
His black hair whipped in the wind, and his profile, as he stared out at their wake, made Maggie feel like she’d accidentally stepped into a time machine. Kyle was eleven, the same age she and David had been when they’d first met. They’d become best friends fast, been inseparable all through junior high and high school, and gotten married as soon as Maggie graduated college.
The oil spill had decimated the local shrimp population for a time, and David had lost his boat and his business. A year later, he’d started drinking, and running pot for a cousin of his. Maggie had divorced the best friend she’d ever had.
Thankfully, they’d repaired their friendship over the years, and he had been a wonderful father in many ways. Maggie still missed him so much sometimes that she stopped breathing. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been in love with him, but she’d loved him deeply, and his absence was felt daily. She knew the kids were dealing with that vacancy, too.
They passed St. George and continued out for a few miles, until they got to a spot Maggie knew very well. It was the place that David had always called his “golden hole,” the place he’d insisted he hauled the best loads. It was also the spot where they had spread his ashes.
She cut the engine and released the sea anchor. The relative silence was jarring, after the wind and the growling of the outboard. Maggie planted her feet as the little boat steadied itself, then walked back toward Kyle and sat down.
They sat without speaking for a few minutes, the silence broken only by the gentle slap of the waves against the boat and the cry of an occasional gull. By the time Kyle spoke, their wake had played itself out.
“Why’d we come here?” Kyle asked, mild curiosity in his voice.
Maggie shrugged, even though he was looking out at the water. “I come out here sometimes, when I miss your Dad. I talk to him.”
“He’s not here,” he said matter-of-factly.
Maggie felt something punch at her chest. “I know. It just seems like the right place to do it.”
Kyle nodded, but didn’t answer. She waited for him to speak again, then decided conversation was up to her.
“I know you miss your Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“We all do.”
Kyle nodded, and they sat for a moment. Maggie had always found it so easy to talk to Kyle, much easier than talking to Sky, just as it had always been so easy to talk to David. But some things just didn’t get said with ease.
“Ever since I was your age,” Maggie said finally, “whenever I needed some advice, or just some peace, I would go out on the oyster beds with your Granddad.”
“I know.”
“If you ever want to come out here, I’ll bring you.”
Kyle waited a moment before answering. “Okay.”
Sky was Maggie’s firstborn, and the older she got, the more she became Maggie’s friend. But Kyle was the love of Maggie’s life. He was gentle and kind, goofy and wise. He opened doors for women and the elderly, and brought Maggie flowers from the woods. Now and again, he would still slow dance with her in the kitchen when a good song came on the radio. Maggie felt his hurt, always, and her instinct was always rescue.
“I’m sorry he’s not here anymore. To be with,” she said quietly.
Kyle looked at her finally, tried to smile. “Me, too.”
They sat in silence again for a few moments, then Kyle spoke up.
“Hanging out with Wyatt helps sometimes,” he said, twisting at a blue braided bracelet.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like you just met him. I’ve known him my whole life. He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah.”
Kyle swallowed, then looked over at her. “Dad liked him, too.”
“I know,” she said, and something like guilt swirled through her stomach.
“He said you guys would probably end up getting married,” Kyle said matter-of-factly.
It took Maggie a few seconds to answer. “Well. I mean, we’re…we haven’t even thought about stuff like that,” she said. “We’re barely dating.”
Kyle nodded, looked back out at the water. “Well, you guys should probably step it up a little. Life is short.”
Maggie wasn’t sure how to respond to that, she was so taken aback. But then Kyle looked at her and gave her another small smile, and she thanked God for his existence. She smiled back at him.
“Our jobs, Kyle. You know.”
“Yeah, I know. But still. You’re not doing anything wrong.”
“Well, it’s complicated, you know?”
“Mom, everything is complicated.”
Maggie smiled out at the water. “That is a fact, little man.”
Then they sat for some time, not speaking anymore, both of them lost in their own thoughts, and their own conversations with a man who had left them before anyone was ready.
Maggie knew she had seen the name of the construction company that had done Crawford’s renovations, and she was rifling through the case file the next morning when she was interrupted by the bleating of her cell phone. She looked at it and saw it was Larry Davenport.
“Hey, Larry,” she answered.
“Good morning, Maggie,” he answered in his gravelly, constantly distracted way. “I have some news of import to share.”
“What’s that?”
“I believe we can establish cause of death for Mr. Crawford. Would you like to hear it over the phone or are you going to drop by here to see for yourself, as you generally insist on doing?”
“I’ll come in,” she said.
“I imagined you would,” he said. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to stop and get me an Earl Grey.”
“I can do that,” Maggie answered. “Non-fat milk and one honey?”
“Alas,” was his answer.
Maggie hung up the phone and flipped through a few more pages until she found the one she’d been looking for. Back in 1977, a deputy had noted that the building on Commerce Street had been checked for signs of Crawford, with an escort from Bayside Contracting to make sure no one got conked by a falling beam.
She swung around to her computer and did a search, but found nothing on Bayside Contracting. She picked up her phone and called a friend at the building department. Three phone calls later, she knew that the company had closed in the nineties, but she had the phone number of the owner’s widow, who lived on the west side of town.
She hung up and grabbed her things, walked down to Wyatt’s office. He was standing behind his desk, draining the last of his café con leche. It would probably be replaced momentarily by a bottle of Mountain Dew.
“Hey,” Maggie said as she walked in.
“Hey,” he said back.
“Larry has some news on cause of death,” she said. “You want to go over there with me?
“I can’t. I have court,” Wyatt answered, tossing the cup in the trash. “Besides, you know I get traumatized when Larry starts prodding and fondling the dead people.”
Maggie smiled. “It’s fascinating.”
“Nova is fascinating. Autopsies are scary.”
“How did you get into this line of work again?”
“By being a really clumsy running back,” Wyatt answered as he walked around his desk. “I’ll walk out with you.”
The heartless morning sunshine blasted them in the eyes as they walked outside, and they both pulled out their sunglasses. There was a strong
breeze, but it was warm even for October, even in the Panhandle, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Wyatt was parked next to Maggie, and they both opened their doors and waited for their interiors to cool off a minute before getting in. Wyatt leaned on the roof of his cruiser.
“Tell Larry I’m sorry I missed it,” he said.
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I have to stop at Delores’s and get him some Earl Grey tea.”
“I hope he’s not using it as some kind of anti-aging thing,” Wyatt said. “He’s pushing eighty and looks closer to a hundred.”
“You’re such a jerk,” Maggie said.
Wyatt waggled his eyebrows at her. “You want to kiss me anyway,” he said.
Maggie felt her face heat up, and she looked away and smiled. “I do.”
Wyatt grinned. “It’s so adorable the way you turn red like that.”
He started to get into his car. “Hey,” Maggie said. He straightened back up. “Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t know. What are you making?”
“Garlic chicken.”
“What time?”
“Whenever you want to come over. Dinner’ll be ready around six.”
“The kids gonna be there?”
“Yeah.”
“Will there be furtive kissing? ’Cause I like it when it’s furtive.”
“You’re twelve,” she said, and climbed into her car.
Larry’s office and the morgue were located in a warren in the back of the first floor of Weems Memorial Hospital, not far from downtown. Maggie took Larry’s tea and her fresh café con leche with her, and found Larry hunched over his desk, making handwritten notes to a file. He looked up as she entered.
“Ah, good morning, Maggie,” he said.
“Hi, Larry.” She set the paper cup of tea on his desk.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said. He lifted the lid and breathed in the aroma of the tea before putting the lid back on and taking a sip. “I miss my coffee most profoundly,” he said, eyeing her cup.
“Is that the Crawford file?” she asked, gesturing at the papers in front of him.
“Sadly, no. This is a heart attack. Thirty-nine years old,” he said, rising from his chair. “Terrible shame. Shall we take a peek at Mr. Crawford?”
Maggie followed Larry down a short hallway to the lab. There were four covered bodies on stainless steel tables, and Larry led Maggie to the closest one. When he folded the sheet down to the hips, Maggie saw that the chest cavity had been opened, as well as a large incision in the lower abdomen.
The body of Holden Crawford was quite different from other bodies Maggie had seen in this place. There were no fluids, and the organs were desiccated and hard, nearly unrecognizable to Maggie’s only moderately trained eye.
“Let us get right to that which is relevant to you this morning,” Larry said. He set his tea down on a nearby cart, then bent over the body with a long stainless steel pick.
“I’ve left the organs in situ for the moment, so you can see what I’ve found thus far.” He poked at the opening he’d made in the parchment-like abdomen. “If you look here, you’ll see that there are several cuts to the flesh of the abdomen. They’re not as easy to see with the naked eye as they would be on a fresh cadaver, but they’re there.”
Maggie bent close to the abdomen until she could see one of the cuts he was indicating. “How many are there?”
“I’ve found four,” Larry answered. He lifted a large flap of the abdominal skin and used the pick to gently tap at the shriveled liver. “Two of them correspond to wounds to the liver, here and here. This wound here also corresponds to a mark on the lower side of one of the ribs. You can just see it here.”
He pointed with the pick, and Maggie bent lower and squinted at the underside of the rib.
“It’s not particularly clear at the moment,” Larry said. “The bones will need to be cleaned to get a good look at the marks and take measurements, but I believe I’ll find more of them. It’s quite difficult to puncture the liver without nicking a rib.”
Maggie straightened up and took a sip of her coffee. “So you think he was stabbed?”
“Thoroughly. As I said, I’ve found four wounds thus far, but I expect that I might find more.”
Maggie looked at the body for a moment. “They’re fairly close together.”
“Yes.”
“If he had fallen or even bent very much, they’d be more spaced out.” Maggie said. “So these wounds were made in quick succession, right?”
“Quite.”
“Someone was either very angry, or they panicked,” Maggie said, speculating aloud. “Sometimes people are so surprised that they actually stabbed someone that they do it again and again. Like they can’t go back, so they want to make sure it’s fatal.”
Larry didn’t respond, just took a sip of his tea.
“What else can you tell me so far?” Maggie asked him.
“Well, the wounds have a slightly upward trajectory, but the liver is quite high. If the assailant were roughly the same height as Mr. Crawford, I would expect the wounds to be lower in the abdomen, or at less of an angle. So I think it’s safe to say the person who did this was significantly shorter than Mr. Crawford. Based on his height, I’d say somewhere between five-six and five-nine.”
“Why not a taller man, thrusting fairly straight from the elbow?”
“The angle would be quite different, I think,” Larry answered. “Also, the person who did this was left-handed.”
Maggie tilted her head and looked at the body, thought about the second man who had been seen with Crawford that night. “It could have been a taller, right-handed man, attacking from behind, couldn’t it?”
“Again, the angle. In that instance, it still would have been more severe.”
Maggie nodded. “Okay.”
“Mr. Crawford will be heading to Tallahassee this afternoon,” Larry said. “They’re much better able to examine a body of this vintage. I’ll let you know what they find, but I thought this might be a helpful beginning.”
“Yes,” Maggie said. “It’s a start.”
The crime scene techs had given the “all clear” on the flower shop, so Maggie let William and Robert know that she was going to take one more look around and then return their place of business to them. She tended to want a last “feel” of a crime scene before it returned to being whatever it had been prior.
The day was once again unseasonably warm and, as Maggie parked in front of the shop, she hoped they would soon see what passed for autumn in the Panhandle.
A few fall tourists checking out the shop windows watched her as she yanked the crime scene tape from the door and fumbled with the lock. She was used to people rubbernecking at crime scenes, but there were still times when she felt like they were blaming her for the fact that there was a crime scene.
She shrugged off her innate sense of guilt and entered the shop, closing and locking the door behind her.
It was odd to be in the shop alone. She’d been a customer many times, of both the flower shop and the hair salon, but she’d never been the only person in the building. The solitude made the silence quieter, the dark corners more shadowy. It wasn’t so much that there had been a body there—Maggie was used to being where bodies had been—she just didn’t do alone very well, no matter where she was. A remnant of her past.
She turned on the overhead lights and walked around the cash register counter. Most of the brick wall had been removed, along with the two-by-fours that had framed Crawford in somewhat. Maggie knew they’d been stained with Crawford’s bodily fluids as he’d decomposed. They’d probably remain in some evidence locker somewhere, or perhaps be donated to some place where people like her learned about two-by-fours that had been stained by decomposing bodies.
She stood in front of the hole where Crawford had been, and stared at it for a while. She could now see clear through to the room beyond the wall. She stepped inside the space
, then turned around to face the main room of the flower shop, much as Crawford had. She looked up, and around her, at what remained of the wall, then turned and stepped into the room beyond it.
Apparently, the room was mainly used for storage. There were several shelving units lined with vases, shopping bags, wrapping paper and other supplies. Along one wall were two coolers filled with jars and boxes of blooms, some of them past their prime.
Maggie stepped back through the hole in the wall and dusted some mortar from her jeans. The hair dryers had stood here, back when this was a salon. Maggie thought back, tried to remember getting her hair done for prom, the only time she’d ever sat beneath one of the odd-looking machines.
She moved a few steps to the right of the hole. Here; she’d sat here, less than three feet from Crawford’s corpse, wishing she could skip the baby blue satin dress, that she and David could just grab a six pack of RC and go out on Daddy’s boat instead. They’d gone to the prom. Both of them had hated it.
Maggie stood behind the counter and looked toward the windows. She had no way of knowing whether there had been blinds or shades on the windows back in 1977. How much privacy had there been in this room when someone had been building—and filling—a wall?
There was a building housing several shops across the street. Directly across from the flower shop was a store that sold expensive clothing and accessories with a coastal flair. It had been there at least since she was about twenty. She couldn’t remember what it had been before that.
She walked to the front of the shop, her hiking boots thumping against the beautiful new bamboo floors, and pulled the string to lift one set of blinds. The sight of William and Robert staring in at her made her lungs shrivel for just a moment. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then went out to the sidewalk.
“Are you done?” William asked her without preamble, smoke swirling out of his nostrils.
“Yes, I think so,” she answered.
Robert heaved a sigh of relief. “Good, because we can’t afford to stay closed like this.”
Maggie handed him the keys to the shop.
Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) Page 8
