What Washes Up

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  It was a secluded place, with a dozen chickens, a big raised bed garden, and an old dock where she kept her Grandpa’s oyster skiff and a small aluminum bass boat. It was simple, but Maggie’s father had been raised there and now she was raising her kids there and she didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  Maggie pulled into the gravel turnaround in front of the house and parked. By the time she climbed out of the Jeep, her Catahoula Parish Leopard hound, Coco, was already coming down the deck stairs at a speed that looked more like suicide than descent. She wasn’t even halfway down when Stoopid appeared from somewhere under the house.

  Stoopid was an Ameraucana rooster of diminutive size, but always seemed to have a great weight on his shoulders. He managed not to be trampled by Coco as he ran at Maggie, wings and neck feathers in full deployment, to advise her that it was getting dark, or that he had spotted her, or that it was raining. His messages usually tended to be vague, but urgent.

  Coco arrived at Maggie first and commenced disassembling herself at Maggie’s feet, and Stoopid, who had a nervous condition, veered off at the last minute, giving Maggie one of his knock-off crows as he flung himself toward the chicken yard.

  “Hey, baby,” Maggie said, as she rubbed Coco’s belly, then she headed up the stairs, Coco jingling and grinning behind her.

  Maggie set her purse and the mail down on the old cypress dining table just inside the front door. The dining area and living area were one open room, which the storm clouds had made darker than it usually was at this hour in the summer, but the kids had left one lamp burning on the side table.

  Maggie and Coco walked down the short hallway off of the living room, and Maggie quickly peeled off her clothes and climbed into the shower. Her conversation with Boudreaux had made a shower seem even more necessary than it usually did at the end of the day.

  Once she’d run the hot water empty, Maggie changed into clean khaki shorts and a white tee shirt, and poured herself a glass of Muscadine wine. She took a decent swallow of it before carrying it through the living room and the sliding glass door out to the deck. Coco, tags clinking, settled down beside Maggie as she sat down at the small round table.

  Maggie had begun to calm halfway through her shower, and she’d managed to quiet her mind to the point that she could think.

  She’d always been good, sometimes too good, at compartmentalizing her feelings. Though affectionate and warm by nature, it was very easy for her to put away feelings that overwhelmed her, be they fear or anxiety or anger.

  It was an aftereffect of the rape that she considered some small recompense for the occasional flashback or nightmare. Some people would consider it a symptom; she considered it a tool.

  Maggie couldn’t help believing in her gut that Boudreaux had been honest with her about Charlie Harper. On the ride home, and in the shower, she had replayed Boudreaux’s words and expressions and, even though she was always wary of believing something she wanted to believe, she felt he was telling the truth.

  She’d turned Charlie Harper’s words around and around in her head, contrasting them with what she felt in her gut to be true. What she’d finally decided was that Fain had known somehow that Boudreaux had pointed suspicion toward him, and that, in doing so, he had created a “mess.” As far as any prior messes, Maggie didn’t really care.

  She was on her second glass of wine, which she was drinking more slowly, when Wyatt pulled into the yard and parked next to Maggie’s Cherokee. Coco’s backside vibrated on the planks of the deck, and she accidentally let out a small squeal, like a kid letting a little bit of helium out of a balloon.

  “Go ahead,” Maggie said, and Coco bolted for the stairs.

  Maggie walked to the top of the deck stairs and watched as Coco excitedly greeted Wyatt, who bent down and gave her a rub before heading for the stairs. He nearly trod upon Stoopid, who had barreled out to advise him of something important.

  “Geez, Stoopid, take a Xanax,” he mumbled as he headed for the stairs. He looked up and saw Maggie. “Hey,” he said, as he started up.

  “Hey,” Maggie said.

  Wyatt had showered, and his hair was still a bit damp. She noticed his impressively thick mustache looked freshly trimmed. He was wearing faded jeans and a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the tails out. She thought he was perhaps the most casually handsome man she’d ever met, and she wished this was their second date. For just a moment, she considered changing her plans for the evening.

  Wyatt stopped a couple of steps below her, which put them eye to eye. He put a hand on either stair rail.

  “So, I was thinking,” he said. “Whatever it is you want to talk about, I already know it’s not good, so why don’t we go ahead and have a nice kiss and a hug now, in case one or both of us doesn’t feel like it later? Unless, what you want to tell me is that you’ve decided to skip this whole thing with us.”

  “No. Of course not,” she said quietly.

  “Well, then brace yourself,” he said.

  He slipped an arm around her waist and tugged her to him, then kissed her. It was warm and gentle and firm, and becoming very familiar. She’d known him very well for six years, but in recent weeks he had become familiar in completely new ways. The way his wavy brown hair felt between her fingers, the way his lips felt, how he tasted faintly of brown sugar.

  For her entire life, Maggie had loved a man who was slightly built and only stood five nine. The first time Wyatt had held her, it had felt like visiting a foreign country. Now, he was beginning to feel a little bit like home. She would have liked to have enjoyed the moment more, but there was a weight of dread in her chest that kept her from it.

  Wyatt took his mouth from hers, gave her a quick kiss on the neck, then straightened up and bounced on the step, which trembled and creaked beneath him. “You need to fix this thing,” he said, frowning.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “I know.” David had been planning to do it. “Do you want a glass of wine?” she asked Wyatt.

  “Sure,” he said, and followed her inside, Coco on his heels.

  They walked into the kitchen, and Maggie poured Wyatt a glass of wine at the small butcher block island, then led him back into the living room. She slowed by the couch, then passed it and sat down on the window seat that David had built when Sky was a toddler. Coco sat at her feet and watched Wyatt, who stopped and stood near the couch.

  “Well. I see this is going to be bad,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “We’re not going to sit on the couch,” he said. He took a good swallow of his wine. “How much wine do we have?

  “Probably not enough,” she said quietly.

  Wyatt walked over to the coffee table across from her and sat down on it. He watched her take a big drink of her own.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  Maggie looked up at him and swallowed hard. It took a moment for her to say it, and Wyatt watched her, frowning.

  “I never should have been on the Gregory Boudreaux case,” she finally said. “And I should have told you that at the scene when you asked me if I knew him.”

  “Okay,” he said cautiously. “So you knew him.”

  “No.”

  Wyatt said nothing, just looked confused. Maggie blew out a breath. “He raped me when I was fifteen.”

  So many different emotions flashed in Wyatt’s eyes at once that she couldn’t identify even one, and she looked away from him, stared at a picture of Sky and Kyle instead. It was one thing to have Boudreaux looking at her, knowing, but Wyatt was something altogether different. She wasn’t ashamed of having been attacked, she was just unaccustomed to it being known.

  “What happened?” Wyatt asked quietly.

  Maggie still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She changed her focus to a lamp instead. “I was fishing on the river. Back in the woods, not too far from here. I have no idea what he was doing there.”

  Wyatt stood up and Maggie turned away from the lamp and watched him walk to the window
by the front door. His shoulders were bunched up, and when he reached a palm out to the window frame, he looked like he was going to slap it, then he just leaned on it, the other hand on his hip.

  “You’re angry,” she said. She noticed that her fingers were hurting from holding her wine glass too tightly, and she set it down on the windowsill.

  Wyatt shook his head, then ran a hand through his hair and turned around. “Of course I’m angry,” he said.

  “I know I messed up—”

  “I haven’t even gotten to that part yet,” he said tightly.

  “Then what are you angry about?”

  “What do you mean—I’m angry because it’s you,” he snapped. “I’m angry because he hurt you! I’m angry—”

  He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the floor for a second before looking at her again. “Because you’re my best friend,” he said quietly.

  The honesty in his eyes as they looked at each other made her forget to breathe for a moment, and made her forget that there was a lot more to say.

  “You’re the only best friend I have left,” she said softly.

  “Well, then we’re equally screwed,” he said quietly. Maggie knew he was trying to lighten up a moment that wasn’t going to get any lighter, but she appreciated his effort.

  He walked back to the coffee table and sat down again. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked.

  “Wyatt, I’ve never told anyone,” she said. “I never even told David.”

  He looked down at her hands, then gently took hold of her wrists and rubbed them with his thumbs. Maggie blew out another breath.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s more that I need to tell you.”

  Wyatt looked up at her.

  “Wilmette was there, too,” she said.

  “Oh crap, Maggie,” he said, and he let go of her hands and covered his face. “Holy crap.”

  “Wyatt, I need you to understand, I didn’t even know about it until after I had the case,” she said.

  He took his hands away from his face. “Explain that. Please.”

  “I have flashbacks sometimes. Sometimes I have dreams,” she said.

  “The old lady chasing you on the beach,” he said.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “David. David told me.”

  Tears welled up in Maggie’s eyes and she blinked them away.

  “I know I’ve been keeping things from you. Important things,” she said. “But in almost thirty years, that’s the only thing I ever lied to David about. But he would have killed him. Do you understand?”

  Wyatt nodded at the floor. “Yes. Yes, I do understand.”

  “There’s no old lady,” she said. “It was always just Gregory Boudreaux. But, after I started working his case, I remembered that there was someone else there. I never saw him. But Gregory said something to him. I never even remembered that until a few weeks ago.”

  Wyatt looked up at her. “If you never saw him, how’d you find out it was Wilmette?”

  Maggie swallowed and chewed the corner of her lip. “Boudreaux told me,” she said quietly.

  Wyatt blinked at her a few times. “Boudreaux told you.”

  “Well, he told me without actually telling me,” she said. “When I was interviewing him about Wilmette. I thought about telling you then. I think I was going to tell you. But then David…”

  “Of course, Boudreaux,” he said almost sarcastically.

  Wyatt sighed and stood back up. He seemed to not know which direction to go in, then walked around the couch and leaned on the back of it.

  “Why would Boudreaux tell you? Was it a slip, did he think you knew?”

  “No. He just told me.”

  “Why?”

  Maggie shrugged a little. “I’m not really sure.”

  “What the hell is it with you and Boudreaux, Maggie?”

  “I think he likes me.”

  “Boudreaux doesn’t like people. He collects people. Either he has something on them or he does something for them.”

  “Why are you mad at me?’ Maggie snapped.

  “I’m not mad at you!” he snapped back. “How can I be mad at you when you just told me you were raped?” He grabbed one of the couch pillows and slammed it back down. “That’s not true. I am mad at you, but I’m mad because everything you’ve done or found regarding Wilmette is going to be suspect.”

  “I know.” Maggie took a deep breath. “And Boudreaux killed Wilmette.”

  Wyatt stared at Maggie a moment, his face expressionless. “Why?”

  “I thought it was because Wilmette wanted money. For staying quiet about it,” Maggie said. “But I think it’s because he disapproves of rape.”

  “Well. That’s nice.”

  “He has a moral code, it’s just a little different,” Maggie said, and wondered why she felt the need to defend Boudreaux.

  “Evidently,” Wyatt said. “I assume, and I hope to hell it’s true, that if you had some concrete evidence of this, we would have had this conversation already.”

  “I don’t have anything concrete, no.” Maggie took a swallow of her wine. “We already knew Wilmette went to Sea-Fair that Tuesday night. Boudreaux told us that. But I can’t find anyone who saw him after that. And this processing room.”

  “What processing room?”

  “It’s new. Boudreaux expanded into fish. The processing room wasn’t even in use yet when Wilmette went missing. But it’s a perfect place for chopping up a body before you dump it into the ocean.”

  Maggie tried not to dwell on the fact that she happened to like someone who she was pretty sure had chopped up a body. The killing didn’t bother her so much; she had killed, too. But the chopping made her skin crawl.

  “Wonderful,” Wyatt said. He sighed and looked at Maggie. “You realize this isn’t going to be a secret anymore. If I try to get a search warrant for Sea-Fair, I’m probably going to have to give a judge a better reason than the fact that no one saw Wilmette after that meeting.”

  “I know.”

  “And if we actually get to indict the guy, then motive comes into play. And the fact that you withheld information.”

  “I know,” Maggie said again. “Just…let me tell my parents and the kids first if and when it comes to that.”

  Wyatt nodded and looked out the window behind her. “I’m pissed on a professional level, as your boss. I’m pissed on a personal level, too. I understand, intellectually, why you did what you did. But my feelings are hurt that you’ve kept so much from me so easily.” He looked at her. “That scares me.”

  “It wasn’t as easy as you probably think,” she said quietly. There was a tickling in her chest, a fear that something that had barely started might end.

  Wyatt opened his mouth to say something, but his cell phone interrupted. He pulled it out of his back pocket, saw the call was from Dwight, and put it on speaker.

  “Hey, Dwight,” he said.

  “Hey, boss,” Dwight said, sounding more flustered than usual. “We need you over on the island, real quick.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We got some bodies washed up on the beach,” Dwight said.

  “Aw, crap. Which beach?”

  “Uh, well…that’s the thing, Wyatt,” Dwight said. “It’s all of ’em. All the beaches.”

  Maggie pulled in right behind Wyatt, parking in the sea grass off of Leisure Lane. Their location was an oceanfront piece of undeveloped land between two sections of vacation rentals. Short roads and driveways had been put in for about six rental houses, then construction had halted, for one reason or another. Those roads and driveways were now packed with police cruisers, Sheriff’s Office cruisers, fire trucks, EMT vehicles, several Coast Guard vehicles, and a few dark sedans of indeterminate governmental origin.

  Maggie grabbed her crime scene kit out of the back, then ran to catch up with Wyatt, who was halfway to the beach. Once they climbed to the top of the dunes, she realized with a heart-stopping cer
tainty that she would not be using her kit at all.

  The beach was covered in lights for several hundred yards in either direction. Lights from Coast Guard cutters just offshore. Spotlights on tripods scattered across the sand. Lights from emergency vehicles, flashlights, and the back decks of vacation rental homes, where people from Ohio or Georgia stood at the rails and watched. Crossing in front of all the lights were the figures of Coast Guard and responders and Sheriff’s deputies.

  Some of them were attending to the two bodies already zipped into gray body bags. Others were bent over four more that were simply dark shapes on the sand where there should be none.

  Neither Wyatt nor Maggie said a word. After a moment, Wyatt started down the dunes and Maggie followed. Dwight ran up to them as they walked down the sand toward the largest cluster of activity.

  “Boss, I’m sorry,” Dwight said, his eyes wide and his face strained. “We got so…so busy, and I forgot to call you for a little.”

  “What the hell happened, Dwight? Did a cruise ship sink out there?”

  “We don’t know what happened, Wyatt,” Dwight said, as he fell in step with Wyatt and Maggie. “Coast Guard says there’s been no distress signals or anything, but Lord have mercy.”

  He raised his arm and pointed at more lights behind them, just discernible some distance down the beach. “They’ve got at least three down there near Schooner Landing,” he said, then stopped and turned and pointed the other way. “There’s more down there, almost at the State Park.”

  Maggie and Wyatt looked at each other. Dwight swallowed hard, and his voice broke as he spoke. “And there’s kids. Little kids. I hear there’s at least a couple of kids, up by the State Park.”

  Maggie’s heart lurched, and she wanted to pray, but she didn’t know what to ask. That this would all be gone? That it would un-happen somehow?

  “Did you know the Coast Guard is pretty much under Homeland Security?” Dwight asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “What’s Homeland Security have to do with it?” Wyatt asked.