Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Zoe looked down at her lap, where her hands began twisting around each other. “Okay.”

  “You’ll be covered, and she’ll get it over with as quickly as she can,” Maggie said. “Your aunt can go in with you.”

  Zoe looked over at Maggie then, and Maggie swallowed when she saw the girl blinking tears away.

  “Can you come with me instead?” Zoe asked quietly.

  “Your aunt is your guardian,” Maggie answered. “I can’t tell her not to be in the room. But yes, I can be with you if you want.”

  Zoe nodded and looked back down at her hands. “Thanks, Coach.”

  Maggie felt her throat thickening. She glanced over her shoulder at the closed back passenger window, saw that the aunt had wandered a few yards away to a grassy median to smoke. Maggie had yet to see the woman hold or even touch her niece. The closest they’d gotten physically was in the car.

  Maggie looked back at Zoe. “Zoe, why did you call me?” she asked.

  Zoe glanced up at her, but then ducked her head again. “You were really nice to me when I was little. I knew you cared about me. My mom liked you a lot.”

  Maggie felt her throat thickening. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she spoke.

  “I still care about you,” she said. It took her a moment to speak again. “Zoe, I’ve been through what you’re going through. Please don’t be embarrassed in front of me.”

  Zoe looked up quickly. “It happened to you?”

  Maggie nodded. “When I was fifteen.”

  “I’m sorry,” the girl said softly, and Maggie’s soul wept. “But you’re okay now?”

  That morning’s nightmare flashed into Maggie’s head. “Yes,” she said anyway. “And you’ll be okay, too. Different from yesterday, but okay.”

  Maggie sat next to the exam table, on the little stool with wheels, as she watched Dr. Broderick. The doctor’s ash-blond ponytail hung over her shoulder as she held Zoe’s right hand and gently scraped under each fingernail. Zoe sat straight as a board in her thin hospital gown, staring without expression at the wall behind Maggie.

  Lynette Boatwright had quickly opted out of accompanying her niece during the examination. Her relief at having a stand-in was obvious, but Maggie didn’t know if it was because it gave her the chance to take smoke breaks, or because she was uncomfortable with the proceedings. It occurred to Maggie that she just didn’t care, but she tried to push that thought into a corner of her mind. It wouldn’t be helpful to build a bias against the woman.

  Maggie was glad that they’d gotten Valerie Broderick. Maggie didn’t know her socially, but they’d crossed professional paths many times. She was in her early thirties, pretty but not in a distracting way, she knew her stuff, and she treated victims with respect.

  “All right, Zoe,” Dr. Broderick said gently. “I’m going to have you lie down now so that I can conduct a vaginal exam. Have you had one yet?”

  “No, ma’am,” Zoe answered. When she glanced at Maggie, her eyes showed her anxiety.

  Dr. Broderick put a hand on Zoe’s upper back. “I’m not going to start without telling you first, okay?”

  Zoe nodded, just barely.

  I’m going to have to use a speculum to enable me to see any signs of injury. Do you know what a speculum is?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then I’m going to use one of these to swab for any semen,” the doctor said, holding up a long disposable swab.

  Zoe nodded. Dr. Broderick moved her hand to Zoe’s shoulder. “Listen to me,” she said. “You didn’t make an appointment for this. It’s an invasion and you’ve already had enough invasion. I’ll be as gentle and as quick as I can, all right?”

  “I’m okay,” Zoe said to the wall.

  “Okay, let’s go ahead and lie down,” the doctor said gently, and she laid a folded blanket across the girl’s slim hips before moving to stand at the foot of the exam table.

  Maggie was surprised when Zoe reached out and took her hand. She scooted her stool closer to the table and covered their clasped hands with her free one.

  “Okay, Zoe,” the doctor said softly. “I’m just going to take your foot and lift it into the stirrups, okay?”

  Zoe nodded sharply, staring stoically up at the ceiling.

  “And now the other foot.”

  The reaction was so sudden that Maggie jumped just a bit. Zoe yanked her hand from Maggie’s, covered her face with both hands, and let out a sob that was raw and feral. Dr. Broderick rested a hand on Zoe’s knee, and Maggie let Zoe go a minute before she put a hand over Zoe’s.

  “Zoe, look at me,” she said gently. “Look right at me.”

  After a moment, Zoe’s cries turned to great, heaving breaths, and she took her hands from her face. Maggie gently curled her fingers into Zoe’s as the girl turned her head to look at her. Maggie leaned toward her, put her face just inches from the girl’s.

  “Where do you look first when you stop a ball?” Maggie asked her gently.

  “First base,” Zoe whispered immediately.

  “When can you steal?”

  “When the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand.”

  “What if you steal early?”

  “Dead ball.”

  “Good girl,” Maggie said quietly.

  “Are you okay for me to begin, Zoe?” the doctor asked gently.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zoe answered, still staring into Maggie’s eyes.

  “Who was the best base stealer on my team?” Maggie asked her.

  Zoe’s lower lip trembled. “Me.”

  “You were a fearless little thing,” Maggie said quietly.

  From the foot of the table, she heard the rustling of paper, and saw Zoe’s eyes widen again.

  “Fearless,” Maggie repeated.

  Fewer than thirty minutes later, Maggie had helped Zoe up and into the adjoining bathroom to change into clean sweats they’d brought from Zoe’s home. She’d explained to Zoe that she’d take her home so that she and her aunt could pack a few things, then take them both to the Best Western, where Zoe could take a long, hot shower and get some rest and something to eat. Once she’d closed the bathroom door, Maggie joined Dr. Broderick out in the hallway. There were two chairs just outside the exam room door. The aunt wasn’t in either one of them, but Broderick was leaning against a wall, waiting.

  Maggie closed the exam room door behind her, then stood in front of the doctor, arms folded across her chest. Broderick sighed before she spoke.

  “I recovered some semen. Hopefully that’ll help you at some point,” she said. “There was some bleeding, but that was because her hymen was intact at the time of the assault.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said, more as a prompt than anything else. The other woman pushed some stray hair behind her ear and blinked up at the ceiling a moment. Maggie waited.

  “She was full of leaves,” she said finally.

  “What?”

  “He filled her full of leaves,” Broderick said quietly.

  The Best Western Apalach Inn was located on Highway 98, about a mile outside of town, on the way to Port St. Joe, Panama City and other points elsewhere.

  Maggie checked in Zoe and Paulette Boatwright, securing them a second floor room for the next three days. Once the arrangements were made they went back outside and Maggie pulled her car around to the side parking lot, then led them up the exterior stairs to room 212.

  Zoe and her aunt stepped aside as Maggie unlocked the room, then she handed them each a key card, held the door open for them, and watched as they took in their surroundings.

  The room, with its dark-stained wooden furniture and heavy draperies, would’ve looked more at home in Atlanta or Savannah, but it was nice and it was clean. There were two double beds, a small table and chairs, a dresser with a flat screen TV, and a microwave oven over a mini fridge. There was also a small writing desk next to the dresser and it was there that Zoe placed her bookbag. Once Maggie closed the door, Zoe looked over at her, a
s though looking for instruction.

  “Zoe, I know you need to take a shower. Why don’t you go ahead and get cleaned up and change into some clean clothes,” Maggie said. “Take as much time as you need. Your aunt and I will wait here until you’re ready to go.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zoe said quietly. She carried her overnight bag over to the further of the two queen beds, placed it on the foot of the bed. Maggie watched as she pulled out a change of clothes and a plastic grocery bag in which she had packed her shampoo and other toiletries. Zoe moved slowly, and seemed to have to think about what to do next. After a moment’s hesitation, she started toward the bathroom. She flipped a few switches in the dressing area before finding the light for the bathroom.

  “Zoe?” Maggie said. Zoe glanced back over at her. “Take as much time as you need, okay?”

  The girl nodded and then quietly closed the bathroom door behind her. The aunt had set her purse and her pack of cigarettes on the table, then sat down at one of the two upholstered chairs. Maggie walked over to the table and sat down in the other one.

  “Ms. Boatwright, I’d like to ask you a few questions while Zoe takes her shower,” she said.

  “Yeah, all right,” the woman said, nodding.

  Maggie pulled a small spiral notebook and a pen out of her purse, then dropped the bag down on the carpet beside her.

  “What time did you say you got home last night?” Maggie asked her.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she answered. “I think it was around one.”

  “Is that pretty common?” Maggie asked as she jotted down her notes.

  “What you mean?” Paulette asked. She didn’t seem nervous about the question, perhaps just slightly resentful.

  “Are you usually home in the evenings, do you go out, do you work nights?”

  “I go out some,” Paulette Boatwright answered. “It ain’t every night, but I have a life.”

  “I’m not being judgmental, Ms. Boatwright.,” Maggie said. “Some rapes are a matter of seized opportunity. But in a lot of cases, the victim is watched for a while before the rapist makes a move.”

  “I’m not a homebody,” Paulette said. “I work hard. I work all day. I like to visit with my friends, sometimes we go out.”

  “I understand,” Maggie said, as she scratched in her notebook. She looked up and Paulette held her gaze almost defensively. “This guy didn’t seem to know that you were home. I’m trying to establish your normal routines. Maybe he’s been watching your house, maybe he hasn’t.”

  Maggie heard the shower turn on in the bathroom. She glanced over towards the bathroom for a moment, and remembered her first shower after she’d been attacked. The last half of it had been in cold water. Maggie’s showers were still longer than most. She didn’t expect Zoe out anytime soon.

  She turned her attention back to Paulette. The woman was occupying her hands by tapping her cigarette pack end over end on the table. Maggie didn’t know if she was nervous, or just needed to smoke already.

  “How long has Zoe been living with you?” she asked her.

  “Since February,” the woman answered without looking up. “About a month after her mama died.”

  “Where was she before then?” Maggie asked.

  Paulette tapped the cigarette pack on the table a few times before answering. “She stayed for a while with the lady that took care of her mama,” she answered finally. “The nurse they had come in.”

  Maggie looked up from her pad. “Why wasn’t she staying with family?” she asked politely.

  “Her mom’s family won’t have nothing to do with her, ‘cause she married a black man,” Paulette answered. “I’m the only one anywhere close on our side of the family.”

  “So she stayed with the nurse for a while, and then she came to stay with you.”

  “The lady couldn’t keep her anymore,” Paulette answered. “One of her kids moved back home, something like that.”

  “How did Zoe feel about moving back here?” Maggie asked.

  The other woman shrugged a little. “She didn’t seem to care either way,” she answered. “Long as she had her books.” She looked up at Maggie quickly. “That’s all legal and everything. She started homeschooling once her mama got real sick. I tried to get her to go back to school when she came here, but she wouldn’t have it. I knew there was no point in trying to make her go.”

  “How are her grades?” Maggie asked. “Does she do well in school?”

  “Girl gets straight A’s,” the woman answered. “She’s always got her nose in those books.”

  Maggie tapped the end of her pen against her pad for a moment. “Do you teach her?”

  “Girl, no,” the woman said without humor. “I gotta work. Besides, I didn’t do so well in school.”

  “So she studies all day while you’re at work?”

  “Yeah. Mostly she studies at home, sometimes she walks over to the library. She gets a lot of library books, for other stuff she wants to study.”

  “What about friends? Does she have many friends?”

  The other woman looked up at her for a moment and look back down at her cigarette pack. “Naw, not really. She doesn’t seem to care about that.” The woman flipped her cigarette pack open and closed a few times before continuing. “She went to church for little while, over there at Holiness. But she stopped after a little while.”

  “Okay.” Maggie tapped her pen against her notepad as she thought a moment. “Have you noticed anyone that you don’t know hanging around the neighborhood lately? Anyone that seems kind of out of place?”

  The woman shook her head slowly. “No, not that I noticed.”

  “What about new service people or companies?” Maggie asked. “Maybe a new lawn guy, somebody from the cable company going door to door?”

  Paulette seem to think a moment, staring at the cigarette pack in her hand. Then she shook her head.

  “No, nothing like that,” she said. “But I’m gone during the daytime, you know?”

  Maggie nodded at her. “Okay, what about people that you’ve had over to the house? Friends of friends, anybody like that. Anyone seem to pay special attention to Zoe?”

  “You mean people I know?” Paulette asked, her voice raised slightly. She sat up a little bit straighter. “Look, I might not be the best guardian,” she said. “There’s a reason I never had any kids. I’m not the mother type. I’m just trying to do what I’m supposed to do. But I don’t have friends over to the house much, and when I do it’s my girlfriends and so on. Men don’t come to the house.” She slapped at her chest for emphasis. “This ain’t somebody I brought to my house.”

  Maggie held up a hand. “Ms. Boatwright, we have to look at anybody that could’ve come into contact with Zoe, no matter how they came into contact with her,” she said. “It’s not a judgment against you, or the people you know.”

  At this, the woman seem to rest back into her chair little bit, placated. Maggie chewed at the corner of her lip for a moment as she thought.

  “Somebody noticed Zoe,” Maggie said finally. “Somebody took notice of her, whenever, wherever, for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter what it is about her. All that matters is that he hurt her, and it’s my job to stick him in jail for it.”

  The women stared at each other for a moment, each assessing the other. Then Paulette nodded at Maggie.

  “Yeah, it is. And you do it.” She flipped her cigarette pack end over end for a moment. “I might not be the nurturing type,” she said. “But she’s still my family, and she didn’t do nothing wrong. You make sure you nail his ass.”

  When Zoe finally came out of the shower, she was wearing baggy sweats that looked comforting, although a little too warm for the weather. Maggie took the two of them to Papa Joe’s for an early lunch, avoiding much discussion and watching as Zoe quietly ate a bowl of seafood bisque. Then she took them across the John Gorrie Bridge, which crossed the bay from Apalachicola to Eastpoint, where the Sheriff’s Offic
e was located.

  Maggie filed her initial report while, down the hall, Zoe worked with Jake, who used the police sketch software to come up with an image of the masked attacker that might be accurate, but would be of little help. Then she took the two Boatwright women back across the bridge, got them settled back into their room at the Best Western, and drove downtown.

  She parked her Jeep in one of the diagonal parking spaces in front of the Apalachicola Coffee Company on Market Street. It was almost one, and the compact historic downtown was in full flux. The Florida Seafood Festival was the next Friday and Saturday, and people were already starting to arrive in town.

  By Thursday, pretty much every hotel room and vacation rental would be full, as thousands of people descended on Apalach to attend the state’s oldest maritime festival. Old couples, teenagers, and families with children would spend that two days eating as much local seafood as possible, watching or participating in the oyster eating and oyster shucking contests, enjoying the carnival rides, and crowding around the stage for live concerts.

  Maggie turned off the engine and sat in the Cherokee for a moment. She watched a middle-aged couple in khaki shorts and bright polo shirts pause a few doors down in front of the Old-Time Soda Fountain, waiting patiently as their pug got a long drink from the stone dog fountain on the brick sidewalk. It was just one of several such accommodations that local shop owners made for the dogs.

  The bell over the door tingled as a couple in their mid-20s came out of the Apalachicola Coffee Company, each of them cradling a to-go cup in their hands. A few parking spaces down, two women in their 30s pulled their golf cart in, shut it off, and walked into a tiny boutique. Traffic downtown was rarely a nuisance. Because it was so compact, covering only three or four blocks in any direction, most people, locals and visitors alike, preferred to walk, ride old-fashioned pastel-colored bicycles, or tool around on golf carts provided by local rental companies.

  Maggie heard the bell over the front door of the Apalachicola Coffee Company jangle once more, and she looked over to see the proprietor, George, standing in the open doorway.