Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he grumbled. “Call the Assistant U.S. Attorney. If he won’t prosecute, then drop it,” he ordered her. “Otherwise, you have two weeks to convince me you’re not wasting our resources.”

  As she hung up the phone, Kit wondered if her new boss was naturally tough or if he had heard the rumors about her. She was not a loose cannon! She didn’t care what her old supervisor said.

  Kit drove to a vacation-property rental office in town. The agent, Connie Jester, was Kit’s friend, Chincoteague born and bred, a sixth-generation islander who knew every native, transient, and come-here who had wandered over the high, arched bridge and ended up settling down. Her position made her a pipeline for a rich storehouse of information.

  Kit told Connie about the body on the beach. “Well,” the redhead responded, “that makes sense. When I heard the FBI was involved, I knew it had to be you. But aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”

  Kit shrugged. “I can’t just ignore a dead child.” Momentarily, in her mind’s eye she saw faces, Honduran faces, Salvadoran faces, faces from an adoption website. “Connie, what can you tell me about the local Latino community?”

  “Oh, they come in at times, big groups of them, going over to the beach. Families, mostly, although there always seems to be a bunch of unattached young men.”

  “Where do they stay?”

  “Most of ’em are day-trippers. When they do stay, they either camp or pile people in a motel room.” Connie’s blue eyes flashed. “You know, there are a lot of migrant workers on the peninsula, picking tomatoes and melons, green beans. Some of ’em stay on, working in the poultry processing plants or picking crabs. A few try their hand at making a living on the water, but that’s something few natives can do, much less newcomers.”

  “Is it likely they’d go out on a charter boat?”

  “Have you checked those prices lately?”

  Kit bit her lip, buying time to think. In all the years she’d been coming to Chincoteague, she’d never been out on a fishing boat, never seen Assateague from the ocean. “Who’s the commander of the Coast Guard station now?”

  “Well, that would be Rick Sellers. Nice guy. From New York, but a nice guy, anyway.”

  Kit wrote his name down. “If a child disappeared, why wouldn’t somebody report it?” she mused out loud.

  “Running drugs,” Connie suggested. “Either that or illegal. Nobody’s gonna raise a flag when they’re doing something wrong.”

  That made sense. Kit heard the sound of the office’s door opening.

  “Here’s David O’Connor,” Connie said. “He’s a D.C. cop. Y’all ought to get along just fine.”

  Kit looked up. Coming in the door was the thirty-something man from the beach.

  The man grinned as their eyes met.

  “David took your grandmother’s house for six whole months,” Connie said. “That’s why I couldn’t give it to you.”

  Six months, Kit thought? What was he doing on Chincoteague for six months?

  “It’s a great place,” he said.

  Kit felt the color rising in her face. Her grandmother’s house was now a rental property. She wished she had the money to buy it.

  Connie smiled at him. “Kit here’s a Fed.”

  “I met her this morning.” Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes.

  “Why were you up on the beach so early?” Kit asked.

  “You don’t surf, do you?”

  She blinked, put off by the response.

  “Low tide came at 8:16,” he explained. “That’s the best time to surf. The waves break farther out, and they’re bigger. I drove over to the island at six, hiked up a ways, surfed until low tide, hiked farther north, surfed some more, and was walking back when I saw you.” He flashed another smile. “FBI, right?”

  How did he know?

  “I could tell by the suit,” he joked.

  Embarrassment sent blood rushing to her face. Kit struggled to regroup. “Not too many cops get six months off. You must be a special case.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll need your contact information.”

  “I was surprised you didn’t ask for it before.” David motioned to Connie who handed him a pen and he scrawled a phone number on the back of one of her business cards, then gave it to Kit.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Connie cleared her throat. “What can I do for you, David?” she asked brightly.

  The two lapsed into a conversation about water heaters and kayaking.

  Kit left. His attitude grated on her like sand. She walked to her car and sat for a moment, trying to shake off her annoyance. She had to lose the emotion and prepare for the conversations she planned to have next. She’d wanted to ask Connie about Brenda Ramsfeld, but she had allowed David O’Connor to deflect her from her mission.

  She was still sitting in the parking lot in her personal vehicle, a green Subaru Forester, fiddling with her CD player, when David O’Connor emerged from the rental office. She clicked off her music and watched him as he opened the lift gate of his own SUV, a battered Jeep Cherokee with an orange one-man kayak and a blue surfboard on a rack on the roof. She saw him rummage through a gym bag, retrieve a dark blue golf shirt, and pull off the T-shirt he’d been wearing. That’s when she saw the scar, an ugly round knot on his left shoulder blade, still a deep, angry red.

  She’d seen that kind of scar before. It was a bullet exit wound.

  2

  KIT PULLED UP TO A PARKING SPACE OUTSIDE THE SUNBAKED FISH & Wildlife Service building on Assateague. The receptionist ushered her into a cool, inner office. “Thanks for your help this morning,” she said to Brenda Ramsfeld.

  The Fish & Wildlife chief responded with a grunt.

  “What kinds of crimes have you seen lately?” Kit settled into the chair she’d been offered.

  Ramsfeld stared at the pencil she held in her hand and pressed its point into her desk blotter. “Normal beach stuff. Alcohol, illegal bonfires, a couple of marijuana possession cases … nothing terribly interesting.”

  “How often do you patrol north of the swimming area?”

  “Every two, maybe three hours.”

  “And who was on that patrol this morning?”

  “Joe Rutgers. The guy who was with me this morning.”

  “I’ll need to interview him.”

  Ramsfeld sat back in her chair. “He’ll be thrilled.”

  Kit studied the woman. “You like this post?”

  Ramsfeld let out an exasperated gasp. “No. I didn’t want to come here. The higher-ups mandated the transfer. There’s nothing here but birds and sand. Nothing. The body on the beach was the first interesting thing that’s happened in months.”

  “Where’d you transfer in from?”

  “The West Coast. I’m going back as soon as I can. And you know what? Handling that murder could have been my ticket.”

  But you really didn’t want it, Kit thought. She handed the digital camera back to Ramsfeld. “I’ll keep the SD card if that’s OK.”

  “Yeah, I figured you would,” the chief responded.

  Kit waited in a private office while Joe Rutgers drove in from the beach. When he walked in, he had a silly grin on his face and smelled like salt and sweat and something else, Kit thought. “Sit down,” she said, motioning to a chair across the table from her. “What time did you patrol north of the lifeguarded area this morning?” Like riding a wave, she wanted to stay ahead of this guy.

  “ ’Bout seven,” Joe said.

  Kit guessed he was in his forties. His brown hair showed flecks of gray and he had a scar across the bridge of his nose. “And what did you see?”

  “Sand. Birds. Ocean.”

  “That’s it? No people.”

  “Nope.”

  Kit flexed her jaw. “How far north did you go?”

  He told her.

  “The patrol takes about 45 minutes. You left the lifeguarded are
a around seven, and you didn’t see anyone as you drove north?”

  “That’s right.”

  He should have seen David O’Connor. Kit looked straight at Joe. “And which dune is it that you stop behind to smoke your joints, Joe?”

  The man’s eyes opened wide in surprise. He pushed back his chair and wiped his hands on his thighs.

  “Now, you want to tell me the truth? Because, as you know, lying to a federal investigator can get you more time than, say, simple possession.”

  A drip of sweat ran down the side of Joe’s face. “All right. I didn’t make it all the way up to the limit of the refuge. I took a break. I shouldn’t have.” He wiped his brow. “But it was so early … I didn’t think it would matter.”

  “ ‘You didn’t think’ is the correct answer.” Kit wrote on her notepad. “From now on, Mr. Rutgers, I suggest you think carefully.”

  Should she consider Joe a suspect? Kit thought he was probably too lazy to kill someone. Still, his tacit acknowledgment that he’d been derelict in his duty would keep him on her list for now.

  The town of Chincoteague had its own police department, then there was the Accomack County sheriff’s office, and above that the state police in Melfa. Eventually, Kit would need to bring them all in; she’d begin, though, with Chincoteague Police Chief Jerry Daisey, another native islander.

  The Chief was in his forties, a bit paunchy with sparse gray hair. Behind his walnut desk, a matching credenza held pictures which Kit presumed to be of his family—a slim, brunette wife, two kids, a boy and a girl, and a dog, a black Labrador retriever. On the wall hung some awards, including a diploma from the National Academy program at the FBI Academy.

  “I appreciate your support, Chief,” Kit began.

  “Anything I can do. That’s a shame, isn’t it? Little boy like that. And right in the summer tourist season. TV reporters are gonna have a heck of a time finding motel rooms.”

  “I’d just as soon leave them out of it for now.”

  He laughed. “The kids have put it on YouTube already and Brenda Ramsfeld’s been giving interviews since noon.”

  Kit’s mouth drew into a thin line. She took a deep breath. “Chief, you know this community better than anybody. What do you think we’re looking at here?”

  The Chief shook his head. “From where that boy washed up, I don’t think it has anything to do with this island or Assateague.” He stretched back in his chair and looked outside the window for a moment. “My secretary says you know Chincoteague pretty well, been coming here since you were a kid.”

  “I haven’t gotten back here for a few years and a lot of things can change in that time.” As she said those words, images of the recent events that had so disrupted her life appeared in her mind. Yes, life can change in a heartbeat. She caught herself touching the finger where her wedding band used to be.

  “You got that right,” the Chief said, snorting. “Back in my granddaddy’s day, people might get drunk, might get into a fight or something, maybe get caught with somebody else’s wife down at the one true bar we had at that time. But nowadays, we see a lot more. Drugs, underage drinking, even caught a stripper some tourists brought in for a party a couple of years ago. We threw the book at them. Chincoteague’s a nice place, a good place to bring a family, and we want to keep it that way.”

  “So you don’t think we could connect the boy to Chincoteague.”

  “I doubt we could. There’s a pretty big ocean out there, and a lot can go on.” Chief Daisey cocked his head. “Why does the FBI care about one kid, anyway? Business that slow?”

  No, business wasn’t that slow, she thought as she walked out to her car. Between counter-terrorism, bank robberies, white-collar crime, serial killings, and public corruption, the FBI had plenty to keep it occupied. By all rights, she should be letting another federal agency handle this case. But she wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. And even she did not know why.

  Kit passed two TV satellite transmission trucks on the road as she drove toward the Coast Guard station. No doubt they were on the island to catch some on-the-scene footage for the evening news. The more the news media got involved, the worse it would be for her. God forbid the bigwigs at FBI Headquarters in Washington should catch a news report and decide to get involved.

  She inched through Chincoteague’s “downtown”—some shops and a hardware store, and the old Island Theater, which was, as usual, playing Misty of Chincoteague in special matinees. The book by the same name, written by Marguerite Henry, had made the island and its ponies famous. Generations of visitors had fallen in love with the place.

  Kit figured Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Rick Sellers was about her age. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, and pale as a ghost in the middle of summer, he apparently had the kind of fair skin that never tanned. Kit wondered how he managed in a job that kept him largely outdoors.

  “Tell me more about this kid you found,” Rick said, inviting Kit to sit down. “You found no identification?”

  “None that we saw in the preliminary exam.”

  “You figure he drowned?”

  “We’ll know more from the autopsy.”

  “A Latino boy, about seven or eight.”

  “That’s right.”

  Rick pursed his lips and frowned. “Don’t know any kid that’s been missing.” He shook his head. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me about the crimes you deal with.”

  Rick laughed. He leaned back in his chair and propped the sole of his shoe against the edge of his desk. “Not much. Nothing happens here!”

  “How long have you been stationed on Chincoteague?”

  “Three years.”

  “No drownings?”

  “Not in the waters we patrol.”

  “Drugs?”

  He dismissed that idea with a wave. “We get a sailboat run aground about once a year, and a fishing boat runs out of gas now and then. Otherwise, the job’s mostly moving the channel markers and waiting for the big storms to come up the coast.”

  Kit studied his face. It was narrow, like a fox’s, and his blue eyes were quick. His laid-back persona seemed carefully constructed and maintained. Automatically, she glanced at his hand. No wedding band. “You like it quiet, I guess?”

  “I got divorced a couple of years ago. That’s all the conflict I’m going to need for a while.”

  Kit blew out a breath softly. “I hear that.” She wrote in the small notepad she’d brought with her. “So, you all have no maritime interdiction efforts going on? Nothing targeting drugs or illegals?”

  Rick snorted. “Around here? Look, there are people here who use, but we’re not a major link on a transport line or anything like that. It’s not that easy to negotiate the channel, for one thing. Lots of shoals where it meets the ocean.”

  Kit bit the inside of her cheek. “I haven’t been out there.”

  “You’ve never seen Assateague from the water?”

  “I’ve been over to Tom’s Cove, but not out on the ocean.”

  “Then let’s go!” He stood up.

  “Now?”

  “It’ll take an hour and a half,” he said.

  Kit checked her watch. Just 5 p.m. Dinner could wait.

  Rick pulled the Coast Guard boat out of the slip and into the Chincoteague Channel. The afternoon wind was dying down and the outgoing tide left the channel glassy and smooth. Kit looked across the broad reaches of water and marshland stretching toward the mainland. She saw egrets plucking minnows out of the shallows and a brown pelican do a dramatic dive after a fish. A couple of fishing boats dotted the horizon. On one of them, a woman held a bright pink umbrella as a shade from the sun. Kit inhaled deeply, savoring the comforting fragrance of the salt air and the marshes.

  “The water looks so calm, but it’s deceptive,” Rick shouted over the roar of the Boston Whaler’s engine. “Underneath, the currents are treacherous.” He waved to a charter fishing boat coming back into port.

  “You like being st
ationed here?” Kit asked.

  He nodded. “It’s all right.”

  They slid past a large marina and reached the southern end of the island, where Kit used to fish for flounder and sea bass. Rick pointed to the channel markers guiding them in an S-curve through the broad expanse between Chincoteague and Assateague. “These shoals are where people get in trouble.”

  “You can’t just go straight?”

  “Nope. You’ve got to stay in the channel or you’ll run aground.”

  They zigzagged through the shallow areas. As they rounded the southern tip of Assateague, the onshore breeze picked up. Kit saw the Atlantic Ocean stretched out before them, an endless sheet of wave-tipped blue-green sea. The Coast Guard boat took the waves well, riding some, breaking through others, the salt spray rising in protest, then subsiding.

  They turned north, with Assateague on their left and the vast ocean on their right. Kit’s thoughts centered on the little boy. What in the world was he doing out on the water? “You get Latinos out here fishing?”

  “I don’t see many.”

  “Pleasure boaters?”

  “Very few Latinos.” He took a deep breath. “How long have you been an agent?”

  “Five years.”

  “In Norfolk that whole time?”

  “No, I just transferred there.”

  Rick looked over at her. “How’d you get involved in this case?”

  “I couldn’t walk away.”

  Motoring about a quarter mile offshore at about fifteen knots, Kit could see through binoculars that most of the beachgoers had dropped their umbrellas and gone home. On the ocean side, a few charter fishing boats were headed back to Chincoteague. Could one of them have seen the boat carrying the little boy? “Those boats ever go out at night?” she asked.

  Rick shook his head. “Early in the morning, but rarely at night.”

  “The big commercial vessels stay farther out, right?”

  “Yes. They don’t want to mess with this area. They keep out in the Atlantic until they can cut in to Wilmington and Philly. Or they go on to New York and New Jersey. Or they’ve cut into the Chesapeake Bay, to the south, before they even get this far.”