“Well, they’re all Mexican, or Central American maybe.”
“Ah, geez,” Wyatt said, barely audible over the rain and the wind off the water. He started walking again.
Dwight struggled to keep up with Wyatt, whose legs were longer than most of Dwight’s body. “There’s four guys here from the actual Homeland Security, and they say it’s their show, them and the Coast Guard.”
“Which one of them is in charge?” Wyatt asked.
Dwight pointed to a man around fifty years old, with close-cropped gray hair, wearing khaki pants and a dark polo shirt. He was kneeling beside one of the bodies on the sand, tapping into a tablet. “That guy. Thompson or something like that.”
The three of them walked over there, and Wyatt stopped next to the gray-haired man. “I’m Sheriff Hamilton,” he said simply.
The man looked up, then stood and held out a hand. “Agent Tomlinson. Aaron.”
“Wyatt,” Wyatt said, and shook the man’s hand. “This is Lt. Maggie Redmond.”
Tomlinson and Maggie nodded at each other, then Tomlinson turned back to Wyatt. “We’ve got eleven so far. Nine on the beaches and two that the Coast Guard have pulled out of the water out there.”
“Drowned?”
“That’s what it looks like, but of course we don’t know. We haven’t found a boat. There was a hell of a storm out there earlier, though.”
The rain was letting up, and Maggie pulled her wet hair out of her face, looked down at the body beside them. It was a man, definitely Hispanic, and she guessed Central American rather than Mexican. He looked to be in his late twenties.
He was wearing a silver chain with a Catholic medal on it, though she couldn’t tell which one. Twisted around in the chain was a length of what looked like red yarn. Maggie glanced over at Tomlinson and Wyatt, but they were walking away.
Maggie knelt down and peered under one side of the open button-down shirt. There was a round pendant of some kind, maybe an ornament or a button. It looked handmade. Dwight bent over her as she lifted the fabric with one finger.
Maggie looked up as two Coast Guard headed toward them with a body bag. She stood up, blinking warm moisture from her eyes.
“What was it?” Dwight asked quietly.
“Minnie Mouse,” Maggie said.
Several hours later, the total number of bodies had risen to fourteen. One more had been discovered down the beach, and two more pulled from the ocean by a Coast Guard cutter. The cutter had also located an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor, built for a maximum of five or six passengers. They’d almost missed their chance to spot it; it had just barely enough air left in it to keep the outboard from pulling it under.
Maggie and Wyatt had been largely unwanted and unneeded, but also unwilling to leave, so they had helped when they could, but mainly been just another couple of witnesses to something no one there wanted to see.
They were standing by the dunes sharing a warm can of Coke that Dwight had scrounged up, when Tomlinson approached them, looking older than he had when they’d gotten there.
“Okay, the Coast Guard’s running the dinghy and the bodies they’ve recovered to the marina. A couple of the ambulances will pick them up.” He rubbed at his face and sighed. “Your medical examiner doesn’t have enough room in his lab at the hospital, so some of the bodies will be taken to a funeral home downtown somewhere.”
“Stephenson’s,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah. There isn’t a single ID on any of these people, but we’ve got some plastic bags with pictures and letters and things; we’ll see what we can do with those.”
Wyatt offered the Coke to Maggie, but she shook her head. He drained the last of it. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to head back to town. I realize this is your show, but as far as any kind of liaison between you and us, Maggie’s your contact.”
Maggie started to say something, then shut her mouth.
“Do me a favor and text me your number,” Tomlinson said, handing her one of his cards.
“Okay,” she said.
Tomlinson looked at Wyatt. “I do have some paperwork I need you to sign, Sheriff.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said.
Maggie called after him as he started off after Tomlinson. “I’m going to the car.”
Wyatt held up a hand to acknowledge that and kept on walking. Maggie turned and headed back toward the lot where they’d parked.
There were a few oceanfront vacation rentals between her and the empty lots. All were dark. She was halfway past the last one, just on the edge of the undeveloped lots, when someone spoke to her.
“Did they find anyone living?”
Maggie started, and looked up to see Bennett Boudreaux leaning on the deck rail. The sky was just beginning to turn pink, but he held a rocks glass half-full of an amber liquid. He was wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in yesterday, and he looked like he hadn’t slept.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“This is one of mine,” he said. Maggie knew Boudreaux owned several vacation rentals on the island. It was one of many different streams of income. “Did they find anyone alive?”
Maggie sighed. “No.”
Boudreaux nodded, drained half his glass and walked inside through the open sliding glass door. Maggie stood there for a moment, then climbed over the dune to the empty lots.
She was leaning on the hood of her Jeep when Wyatt arrived. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him look so exhausted.
“I don’t want this, Wyatt,” she said.
“Nobody wants it, Maggie,” he said, fishing his keys out of his jeans pocket. “But the fact is, I don’t have any other open cases I can give you. Unless you want to take vacation or start working patrol, this is what I’ve got.”
They looked at each other a moment, then Maggie nodded.
“You know, my Dad always said you can tell a lot about people by what washes up on the beaches,” Wyatt said. “He was talking about hypodermics and beer bottles, but I wonder what this says.”
Maggie watched Wyatt as he looked back toward the beach.
“Let’s get out of here,” Wyatt said, and opened his door.
Wyatt drove along Gulf Beach Drive, headed for 300, also known as the bridge, which would take him to Eastpoint, where he and Maggie would pick up the other bridge back to Apalach. The only other vehicle on the road was one of the EMT trucks, several blocks ahead. Maggie’s was the only vehicle on the road behind him.
There wasn’t much to Gulf Beach Drive, or to Saint George Island, which was only half a mile wide in most places. Bayside vacation rentals lined the left side of the road, oceanfront houses lined the right. There were only a couple of places to eat or pick up groceries, get gas or hit an ATM.
A few blocks shy of the turn to the bridge, Wyatt passed a little pizza place on the corner. It was as nondescript as such a place could be, with a gravel parking lot and a few benches and tables on a small deck.
As he passed, Wyatt noticed a kid or teenager with dark brown hair sitting at one of the tables. Wyatt looked away to grab a half empty Mountain Dew from the console and unscrewed it, then put it back down and turned on his left turn signal before making a U-turn without slowing. There had been no cars in the gravel lot at the pizza place.
Wyatt passed Maggie, who had slowed down and was frowning at him as he passed. He pulled into the gravel lot and got out of the car. He could hear Maggie turning behind him.
As Wyatt walked up the ramp to the deck, he saw that the kid was a boy, maybe eight or nine years old. He was wearing cut offs, and a Pokémon tee shirt under an open gray hoodie. He watched, expressionless, as Wyatt approached.
“Hi,” Wyatt said. The kid looked at him warily, but said nothing. “¡Hola!” Wyatt tried again. He could hear Maggie parking in the gravel behind him and he wanted her to hurry up. His Spanish sucked; hers was slightly better.
“Habla Ingles?” The boy shook his head, but just barely. “Está bien. Soy am
igo.”
The boy didn’t seem to think Wyatt looked like much of a friend. Wyatt sighed with relief when Maggie stopped beside him.
“What’s going—oh.” Maggie looked at the boy, who seemed twice as alarmed with twice as many strangers standing there.
“Ask him his name,” Wyatt said. “Where his parents are.”
“Me llamo Maggie,” Maggie said. “¿Cómo te llamas?”
The boy looked from Maggie to Wyatt, then back at Maggie.
“Virgilio,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Virgilio,” Maggie repeated. “¿Dónde está su familia?”
The little boy looked at her for a long moment, then stretched out his arm and pointed toward the beach.
“Dammit,” Wyatt whispered.
Wyatt thought it best for Virgilio to ride with Maggie, so he followed them to the docks, where Tomlinson was handling the transfer of the bodies from the Coast Guard cutter. Maggie scrounged up a bottle of water from her console, and her heart broke a little when the child downed it all at once.
She tried to engage him a few times on the fifteen-minute drive, unsuccessfully, and finally just let him sit in the back seat without being accosted by questions.
The sun still wasn’t all the way up, but when they pulled up to the marina, pockets of locals stood nearby, silently watching as the gray body bags were unloaded from cutter to truck. Maggie turned off the Jeep and sat, unsure about exposing Virgilio to the scene, wondering which of the gray bags might hold one of his parents.
Wyatt walked up to her window and tapped, and Maggie rolled it partway down.
“Wait here a minute,” he said, and walked off toward the group of Coast Guard and deputies and Homeland Security guys.
Maggie watched him as he located Tomlinson in the crowd and pulled him aside. Tomlinson looked over at Maggie’s Jeep, and she had a momentary urge to drive away with Virgilio, to take him home and lock her doors.
Wyatt and Tomlinson spoke for a moment, then they walked over to the Jeep. Maggie tamped down her fight-or-flight response and rolled down her window.
Tomlinson looked into the back seat and sighed, then looked at Maggie.
“Have you gotten anything else out of him?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
Tomlinson leaned one hand on her window frame and spoke to Virgilio softly, in perfect Spanish. The boy didn’t answer. When Maggie glanced in her rear view mirror to look at him, he was looking back at her.
“Está bien, mijo,” she said.
“Virgilio,” Tomlinson said. “¿De dónde eres?” Where are you from?
Maggie watched the boy in the mirror as he took a moment to answer. She didn’t understand his first reply, but when Tomlinson asked another question, he answered, “Guatemala.”
Tomlinson asked the boy who was with him, and the answer was given so softly that Maggie barely heard it. “Mi mamá. Mi papá. Mi hermana pequeña.” My mom, my dad, my little sister.
Maggie blinked a few times as her eyes filled, and she tried to cover it by opening her door. Tomlinson and Wyatt stepped back as she quickly got out.
“You’re not going to ask him to identify them, are you?” she whispered, forgetting that the boy didn’t understand English.
“We might have to, if we can’t do it ourselves,” Tomlinson answered. He was quiet, but he didn’t bother whispering. “But don’t worry, I’m not a robot. I’ve got three boys of my own.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Wyatt asked.
“I’ll need him to stay with us,” Tomlinson said. “We’re gonna stay at the Bayview for a couple of days at least, instead of driving back and forth to Tallahassee.”
“He doesn’t have anything. He doesn’t even have something to change into,” Maggie said. “Can I bring him some of my son’s things?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’d appreciate that,” Tomlinson said. He looked back through the front window. “Virgilio,” he said. “Ven conmigo, okay?” Come with me.
“Do you have to take him now?” Maggie asked.
“I need to talk to him while everything, anything, is fresh in his mind, Lieutenant.”
“He’s scared,” Maggie answered. “And he’s probably exhausted and hungry.”
“I understand. I’ll make sure he’s okay, but he needs to come with me now.”
Maggie looked at Virgilio through the back window. He looked even smaller than he already had, and his eyes were wide as he listened to their conversation. She sighed and opened the back door.
“Está bien, Virgilio,” she said for what seemed like the tenth time. She rummaged through her brain for the right words. “Él va a cuidar de ti.” He’ll take care of you.
She held out her hand, and after a moment, the little boy climbed out of the Jeep, though he didn’t take her hand. Tomlinson gently put a hand on the child’s shoulder.
“You’re not taking him over there, are you?” Wyatt asked.
“No, I’ll have someone walk him over to the hotel.” The Bayview was right on the marina, just half a black away.
“Okay,” Maggie said, as though her agreement was needed.
Maggie and Wyatt watched Tomlinson walk the boy over to another agent, a woman, who was writing on a pad near one of the dark sedans.
Maggie watched the two agents talk for a moment, as the little boy stood there between them, a bystander to his own immediate future. Then her attention was caught by the sight of William and Robert, the florists, as they stood on the sidewalk, watching the activity.
They looked decidedly sad, and Maggie’s respect for them went up several notches. She was certain that their expressions had nothing to do with a threat to their business.
Her attention was drawn away from the crowd at the docks when Wyatt opened her door.
“Go home and get some sleep,” he said.
Maggie opened her mouth to say something vaguely nurturing, then changed her mind and got in. Wyatt put both hands on her window frame and closed her door, leaning for a moment.
“Wyatt?”
He looked at her for a moment, and she tried to read the emotions beneath the exhaustion.
“Neither one of us is up to talking about it right now, Maggie,” he said. “It’s really not something we should be trying to think about when our asses are dragging and our hearts are broken. It’ll keep.”
Maggie looked up at him, trying to gauge whether he was distancing himself from her or just worn out.
“It’ll keep,” he said again, quietly. Then he turned and headed for his car.
Maggie watched him walk away, and she felt an additional weight of sadness settle into her chest, and just a little bit of fear.
She picked her cell phone up off the passenger seat and speed-dialed her parents. It was only seven, but the only time her Dad had slept past five-thirty was a couple of years ago, when he was recovering from having part of his left lung removed. Now, he only went out on the oyster beds a few days a week, but he was still up before the sun.
Gray Redmond answered on the second ring. “Hey, Sunshine,” he said, his voice at once soft and gravelly.
“Hey, Daddy,” Maggie said. “Are you working?”
“No, I’m home this morning.”
“Are the kids up yet?”
“I’m sure Sky will be up at the crack of dinner, but Kyle’s up,” her father answered. “We’re going to do some fishing out back. Are you at the marina?”
“Yeah.”
“You been there all night?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a horrible thing.”
“Yes,” she said again. “Can I come over and have some coffee?”
“Door’s unlocked, Sunshine.”
Maggie’s parents lived on a stretch of Hwy 98, just a couple of miles outside town, right on the bay. They’d bought it back when such property was both available and affordable. Though that part of the road was a mixture of older, modest houses and fishing related businesses, the proper
ty today would have been way out of her parents’ reach. Her mother had been a homemaker her entire adult life, her father an oysterman.
Maggie drove down the gravel drive that ran through the deep, narrow lot, and parked in front of the pale yellow house where she had been raised. She found her parents in the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Morning, you guys,” she said.
“Morning, baby,” he Dad said.
“Oh, honey, you look wrecked,” Georgia Redmond said, and got up from the table.
Georgia was one of those women who was strikingly beautiful without doing a single thing to enhance her beauty. With thick, dark brown hair that curled around her shoulders, large green eyes, and a tiny waist, she still turned men’s heads at fifty-eight, even though she genuinely never noticed. She had been madly in love with tall, skinny, soft-spoken Gray since high school.
Maggie accepted a hug from her mother, breathing in the comforting scents of gardenia, cotton and coconut oil, then Georgia pulled out a chair.
“Sit down honey, and I’ll get you some coffee,” Georgia said. “Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks, Mom.” Maggie sat down heavily in the yellow-flowered chair that she’d occupied for nearly every meal of her youth.
“We heard what happened on the radio,” Gray said. “What’s going on down there?”
Maggie sighed. “We found a little boy. Alive. He’s the only one.”
“Oh, bless his heart,” Georgia said, setting Maggie’s cup down in front of her.
“Yeah. I wanted to ask Kyle if it was okay for me to take him some of his old clothes, maybe a toy or something.”
“He’s just in the bathroom,” Georgia said. “What’s going to happen to the boy?”
Maggie shrugged and shook her head. “I have no idea. Homeland Security is in charge of everything. I would imagine they’ll get him home, sooner or later.”
“What about his family?” Gray asked. “Were they out there, too?”
“He lost his parents and his little sister.”
They sat in silence for a moment, while Maggie stirred milk and sugar into her coffee.
“Hey, Mom.”
Maggie looked up and smiled as Kyle walked in. He was ten years old, but looked much younger. He had David’s slight build, glossy black hair, and long, thick lashes. When she looked at him these days, her heart couldn’t decide whether to wither or bloom.
What Washes Up Page 5
