Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “You just gonna sit out there or what?” he asked her gruffly.

  Maggie got out of the Jeep and tossed him a look. “I’m coming,” she said.

  George turned around and walked back into the shop, leaving the door open for Maggie. She walked in and practically sucked on the air, filled with the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans.

  The Apalachicola Coffee Company was one of Maggie’s favorite downtown businesses, coffee notwithstanding. With soaring ceilings and dozens of burlap coffee sacks hanging from the exposed brick walls, it was industrial chic without pretense.

  The left side of the shop boasted glass ice cream freezers filled with homemade gelato, and long glass cases displaying expensive, but worthwhile, handmade chocolates. But it was the back of the shop that interested Maggie, and she walked toward the back counter, where George waited next to his elaborate espresso machine. Maggie threaded her way through a grouping of small round tables and approached the empty counter. There were just a few people sitting and enjoying their coffee or their ice cream, and Maggie was relieved that she wouldn’t have to wait. Her head throbbed from a lack of caffeine, and she could feel her humanity diminishing with each un-caffeinated moment.

  George, a solid, stocky man with a full head of gray hair and a consistently hangdog expression, waited for her with his palms resting on the counter.

  “What’ll it be, my dear?” he asked her almost wearily.

  “What did you roast this morning?” she asked him.

  “I got some nice Kenya, and I got Oysterman’s Choice,” he answered. “I’m guessing you want the Oysterman’s.”

  “Yes, please,” she answered, then her eyes narrowed slightly. “Three shots.”

  George sighed softly at her before answering. “You don’t need three shots,” he said without much enthusiasm. They’d had this conversation many times before. “This isn’t Sissybucks, and the latte already comes with two shots,” he said. “As you know.”

  “George, I’m the owner of several large-caliber weapons,” Maggie said mildly.

  “That’s impressive,” he said, in a tone that said it wasn’t. “I’m the owner of this fine machine.”

  They stared at each other a moment, neither one of them blinking. George let out a slight sigh.

  “I suppose you want it not too hot,” he said.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Because you need it now,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  George stepped over to the espresso machine. “Anything else?” he asked, like he expected the answer to be negative.

  “I need a latte for Sheriff Hamilton, too,” she said.

  He paused, a scoop of coffee beans in his hand, and looked up at her. “I suppose he wants three shots.”

  “Picture a giraffe on meth,” Maggie said.

  “Regular it is.”

  When Maggie stepped back out onto the sidewalk, a latte in each hand, she found Wyatt waiting for her.

  He had parked his truck next to her Jeep, and was leaning back against his grill, arms folded across his chest. When he saw her, he pushed off and joined her on the sidewalk, his eyes focused greedily on the cups in her hand. She held his out to him and he took it from her eagerly.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” she said back. “What time are you meeting Daddy?”

  “I told him I’d be over there in a few minutes,” Wyatt answered. “Want to sit a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  They both dropped onto the bench in front of the shop, though Wyatt had to drop a significantly greater distance.

  “What are you guys going out for?” Maggie asked.

  Wyatt took a long swallow of his coffee and sighed appreciatively. “Gray wants to go out to St. Vincent Island for some speckled trout.”

  “I’m making lasagna just in case.”

  “Are you saying I’m not gonna catch enough for dinner?”

  Maggie gave him a generic shrug.

  “I’m sort of offended,” he said mildly.

  “Okay.”

  “So are we still on for dinner, then?” Wyatt asked her.

  “Yeah, why not?” she answered.

  It was Wyatt’s turn to shrug.

  “Wyatt, it’s just a case,” Maggie said.

  “It’s a rape. And you know the girl.”

  “I did.”

  “Nonetheless, I’m sure it sucks,” he said.

  “Every case sucks, Wyatt,” Maggie said. “Maybe I should have been the one to quit the job.”

  “I’m not quitting,” Wyatt said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And what would you do? Start cashiering at the Piggly-Wiggly?”

  Maggie sighed. “I don’t know. But there are plenty of working women in this town who aren’t cops.”

  “I’m happy with my decision,” Wyatt said, and took a long drink of his coffee.

  Maggie looked over at him. “Yeah?”

  “Yes. I’m not too excited about this whole appointment thing, though.”

  Once Wyatt had convinced the county commissioners to allow him to make the job change, it was assumed that someone in the department would be promoted to the position of Sheriff for the two years remaining in Wyatt’s tenure. However, it appeared that the governor was going to exercise his option to appoint someone.

  Who that someone might be, no one yet knew, but everyone in the department was disappointed and a little nervous. The Franklin County Sheriff’s office was very insular; everyone there knew everyone else and had been working together for years. The idea of someone from outside the department taking Wyatt’s place was unsettling, despite the fact that he’d been an outsider, too.

  “Have you heard from the commissioners yet?” Maggie asked him after a moment.

  “Nope. As far as I know I’ve got another two weeks or so of doing my job,” he said. “Then I’ll be helping someone else do it.”

  “You know they’re going to have some tough shoes to fill,” Maggie said.

  “I have set an intimidating standard,” Wyatt agreed.

  “We won’t like him.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  He took another swallow of his coffee and then set the cup down between his legs. Maggie watched him out of the side of one eye as he twisted it around a few times.

  “How are you feeling about the job change?” he asked her finally.

  “Nervous.”

  “Why?”

  Maggie took a moment before answering. “What if you decide it wasn’t worth it?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, shrugging. “You could find out I’m less appealing than you thought.”

  Wyatt sighed and draped an arm over her shoulders. “See, that’s the benefit of being best friends for so long. I’ve already gotten over that.”

  Maggie stopped at the stop sign in front of Zoe’s duplex. The apartment was still, silent, empty. Maggie had returned the keys to Paulette Boatwright when they left the Sheriff’s office, and the crime scene team had done and gotten all they were able to do and get. Maggie turned left, drove along the side of the duplex, and pulled over at the spot in the woods marked by the crime scene tape.

  Her tires crunched on the gravel along the side of the road, but once she shut off the engine and stepped out of the Jeep, the neighborhood was surprisingly quiet. A few houses down, some kids played on a dilapidated aluminum swing-set, but other than that, there was surprisingly little activity for a Sunday afternoon. Maggie fiddled with her car keys for a moment as her eyes scanned the neighborhood then came to rest on Zoe’s back door. She leaned back against her driver’s door and considered Zoe’s duplex.

  From this spot, Zoe’s back door and yard were clearly visible, as was the window over the kitchen sink. But there was no living room window on this side of the house, only the two in front. Maggie chewed her lip for a moment as she thought about that. She didn’t believe for a moment that this youn
g white guy, a stranger in the neighborhood, had just happened to be walking down Zoe’s street when he glanced in her front living room window and, seeing Zoe sitting there on the loveseat, then walked around to the back door to attack her.

  She looked at the back door for a moment. No, he had seen Zoe let the cats out the back door. He couldn’t have known whether she’d locked it or not, but for whatever reason he had decided that was his time to act.

  Maggie’s eyes grazed the backyard. There was a streetlamp about equidistant between the back of Zoe’s house and the back of the duplex opposite her, the backyard of which blended seamlessly into the backyard of Zoe’s. There was one decent-sized oak in the yard, but while it might have hidden him from anyone inside Zoe’s house it would have exposed him to anyone in the house behind. If she were watching the back of Zoe’s house, she wouldn’t do it there.

  He had been here, in the woods. Maggie looked over her shoulder across the roof of the Jeep and stared at the woods. She sighed, then pushed off from the Jeep and headed toward the crime scene tape.

  Her combat boots crunched across the gravel until she threw her leg over the tape and stepped onto the dirt path.

  As she made her way to the clearing, Maggie reminded herself that she had already been there that morning. True, there had been other officers around her, but being alone there really wasn’t any different. This was Zoe’s scene, not her own. Even so, she felt like a spider was walking up her spine. She pushed the feeling away and gave herself a mental slap.

  She stepped into the small clearing. The tech guys had removed all of the trash from the center of the old tire, on the off chance than any of it might be useful. The odd soda bottle and crumpled cigarette pack had also been collected.

  Maggie’s boots crunched through the layer of dead leaves on the ground, and she squatted, picked up a few and stared at them.

  He filled her full of leaves, Dr. Broderick had said.

  A faint feeling of nausea swirled through Maggie’s stomach. She stood up, took a deep, cleansing breath, and looked in the direction of Zoe’s house. It was impossible to see it from where she stood, and what rapist used the neighborhood party spot as a vantage point?

  She sighed, stepped over the other side of the crime scene tape, and started making her way through the woods, parallel to the road. There were a few odds and ends here and there, an old soda can, a dirty sock, a used and taped up diaper that Maggie didn’t want to consider too closely.

  She saw nothing warranting much attention until she had gone about twenty-five yards and come across an old oak stump. It wouldn’t have been all that interesting if it wasn’t at a spot almost exactly across from Zoe’s apartment, about ten yards deep into the woods.

  Maggie sat down on the stump and looked through the trees. If she sat up very straight, she had a pretty good view of the side and back of Zoe’s duplex. She sat there for a few moments, a cold anger seeping into her chest, then stood back up. She looked around the stump for anything that might have been left behind by someone keeping a vigil of any length, but she saw nothing.

  The ground was mostly gravel and leaves, with a few rebellious patches of grass taking stands that were more spiritual than literal. However, there were a few partial footprints in the small amount of dirt at hand. Maggie was better with bodies than she was with prints, but they looked like athletic shoes to her.

  She squatted down and took a few pictures on her iPhone, then scrolled through her contacts for the crime scene tech number. Once she’d asked Jake to come back out and try to get the shoe prints, she pushed through the trees, too eager to get out of the woods to retrace her steps.

  Once she got back out on the shoulder of the road, she felt she could breathe more easily. It was then that she noticed she was still holding one of the leaves. She tossed it down and brushed off her hands.

  Wyatt had been right; it was easier for him to transfer than for her to quit. In a town of fewer than three thousand people, she lacked any marketable skill other than cop work. She also loved what she did. No, she needed to do what she did. But she wondered when she’d finally get tired enough of being so close to so much that was ugly.

  Half an hour later, Maggie drove down the half-mile dirt road that cut through her five acres a few miles north of town.

  The cypress stilt house her father’s father had built sat in the middle of old forest that butted up to the river. Here, where the loudest sounds were the cicadas and the crickets and her chickens, Maggie felt truly herself, and truly away from the world. Out there, she was a competent cop, a modern, educated woman. Here, she was just a cracker, as her people on both sides were crackers, and she was soothed by that.

  Coco tossed herself down the deck stairs with a percussion of tags and toenails, then threw herself down at Maggie’s feet as soon as she got out of the Jeep. Maggie knelt down and rubbed her belly.

  “Hey, baby,” she said quietly, as she looked up to the deck, where Stoopid stood at the top of the stairs, emitting his usual barrage of news and interrogatory remarks. When he began to perambulate down the stairs like an old man who’d just had a hip replacement, she decided to save him the trouble, and headed for the house.

  Stoopid stopped halfway down the stairs, and Maggie watched him as he pecked at his chest with a good deal of agitation, then finally flung a tiny feather over his back.

  “Quit it, Stoopid,” she said as she met him on the stairs, Coco trailing behind her. The rooster had been systematically plucking his chest for the last few days. She supposed she needed to run him to the vet and make sure he didn’t have mites or some other chicken affliction.

  Stoopid fell in behind Coco, ignored Maggie’s half-hearted “not you” when she opened the screen door, and tapped on into the house.

  Maggie dropped her purse on the dining room table. She could hear the sounds of a video game coming through Kyle’s open door down the hall, and found her seventeen year-old daughter Skylar in the kitchen.

  “Hey, baby,” she said.

  “Hey,” Sky answered from the counter, where she was making herself a sandwich. “I got your text. I thought you were off today.”

  “I was. I got called in,” Maggie answered.

  She pilfered a slice of salami from the counter and turned to find Coco smiling up at her. Maggie tore off a small piece and handed it to her dog. Stoopid was standing in front of the fridge, trying to talk it into opening itself. Maggie gently swept him aside with her foot, took out a bowl of fruit and vegetable scraps, and then headed for the front door with Stoopid right behind her.

  She dumped a handful of scraps into his cat bowl out on the deck, then let the screen door slap shut behind her as she went back inside. She put the bowl back in the fridge, and grabbed a cold RC for herself.

  “You want a sandwich?” Sky asked.

  “Yes, please,” Maggie answered. She took a long drink of her soda, kicked her shoes out into the living/dining room, then leaned back against the small butcher block island. She stared at her daughter’s back as the girl pulled down another plate and started making a second sandwich.

  It always surprised her to notice that Sky was exceptionally beautiful. People said she was the image of her mother. She had Maggie’s long, dark brown hair, her almost almond-shaped green eyes. The only real difference between them was Sky’s cleft chin, yet Maggie dismissed her own appearance, and marveled at her daughter’s.

  “Dude,” Sky said without turning around. “I feel your eyeballs.”

  “Sorry,” Maggie said.

  Sky turned around and brought their plates to the island.

  “Has Kyle eaten?” Maggie asked.

  “Little man ate a little while ago,” Sky said.

  She took a bite of her sandwich and watched Maggie as she chewed. Maggie took a bite of her own sandwich.

  “Rough morning?” Sky asked after she’d swallowed.

  Maggie sighed and put her sandwich down. “Pretty much.”

  Sky ate another bite of h
er sandwich, watching Maggie and waiting. Maggie chewed the corner of her lip and watched her back.

  “You’ll hear about it eventually,” she said finally. “Do you remember Zoe Boatwright?”

  Sky thought for a moment. “No. Wait, from softball? Like, my last year in coach pitch?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sky put her sandwich down. “Crap, dude. What?”

  “She was raped last night.”

  Mother and daughter stared at each other a moment.

  “Here? I thought she and her mom moved away.”

  “She moved back a little bit ago.”

  Maggie watched Sky’s eyes dart around the room for a minute while she assembled her thoughts.

  “Is she okay?” Sky asked when she finally looked back at her mother.

  Maggie shrugged. “She will be.”

  “Did you catch the guy?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did she know him?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t know.”

  Sky picked at the crust of her sandwich without interest. “Man,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Maggie asked. “A lot of people will know eventually, anyway, but you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Sky said. She flicked some crumbs from her finger. “Man. It’s bad enough her dad died, you know?”

  Maggie sighed. “She lost her mom to cancer last year.”

  Sky looked up at her quickly, blinked a few times.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said quietly.

  After a moment, Sky pushed her plate away.

  “If you catch him, how long will he go to jail?”

  Maggie shrugged. “I’m not the State’s Attorney. It depends on a lot of things. But she’s under eighteen, so he could get as much as thirty years, but maybe get out in ten.”

  “Can we kill him when he gets out?”

  Maggie tried for a smile, almost managed it. “Why not? We’ll make a family outing of it.”

  Maggie stepped over to the 1940s porcelain farm sink beneath the kitchen window. It had been salvaged from her grandmother’s house in 1972 after Hurricane Agnes, and it was Maggie’s favorite thing in the house. If the house ever burned, Maggie would get the kids and dog out, then likely die trying to rip out the sink.