“I told you because I do trust you, Wyatt!” Maggie said. “I know I waited too long, but I told you. I don’t want to have secrets.”
“But you do, Maggie.” Wyatt glanced at Coco, who had stopped smiling and was looking confused. He lowered his voice when he spoke again. “You do. Because I don’t know what the hell is going on with you and Boudreaux.”
“I don’t either, but it’s not—it’s not a romantic thing, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.
“That’s not what I’m worried about, but I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I were you.”
“That’s not it, Wyatt,” she said.
“Then tell me what the hell it is!” he yelled.
Coco whined and stood up, and Maggie put a hand on her neck before she stood up, too. Sitting made her feel too small.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you need to figure it out, because you just took a road trip with the guy that you told me chopped up Wilmette and dumped him in the ocean.”
“Look, I know you don’t get it, but I really don’t think he wants to hurt me,” she said.
“That’s not even the point.” Wyatt bent over a little so she could look him in the eye. “You’re a cop. You’re a mom. You coach girls’ softball, dammit! But you voluntarily got in a car with a guy that chops people up.”
Maggie shook her head. “I know. I know.”
“I want to go over there and shoot him because he’s messing with your head!” he yelled.
“Everything is messing with my head!” she yelled back. “Are you kidding me? In the space of a month, I work the suicide of the guy that raped me, find out the foot in my other case belonged to the guy that watched it happen, I get caught up in some kind of weirdness with Boudreaux, and I watch my ex-husband get blown up right in front of me! You’re damn right something’s messing with my head, but it’s not just Boudreaux!”
Coco whined and licked Maggie’s hand, then stretched her neck and nudged Wyatt’s. He reached down and put a hand on her head, then ran the hand through his hair.
“You put me in a position of having to choose between protecting your privacy and doing my job, Maggie, and you did it at least partly because of this thing with you and Boudreaux.”
“That’s not true! I told you as soon as I knew for sure that he killed Wilmette.”
“Now you’re not even being honest with yourself,” Wyatt said. “How long did you suspect he did it?”
Maggie paused, not because she didn’t want to answer, but because she wasn’t sure what the answer was. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “But I needed to be sure.”
“And now you are, and you’re riding around the countryside with him like he’s your real estate agent!”
“It was about the Guatemalans, Wyatt, the one case I can still touch with a ten foot pole!”
“But riding in his car was not about the Guatemalans, Maggie. It was about you and Boudreaux!”
“Look, I realize that doesn’t seem like the smart thing to do—”
“Smart thing? It doesn’t even seem like the normal thing to do,” he shot back.
Maggie felt a coldness pass through her chest, and she took a deep breath. “I’m as normal as I need to be,” she said. “And I’m sorry that I put you in a bad position, and I’m sorry that this is getting in the way of something that has barely even gotten started—”
“Don’t kid yourself, Maggie. This,” Wyatt said, and pointed at her and back at himself. “This has been going on a lot longer than a month and you know it.”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Maggie said.
“Well, that’s too bad! I fight when I’m mad!” Wyatt said. “People fight.”
“David and I never fought,” she said, and instantly regretted it. She hadn’t meant it to be a dig, she just wasn’t used to arguing this way.
“Of course you didn’t, Maggie,” Wyatt said. “You guys were practically brother and sister.”
Maggie stared at him, and he huffed out a breath and started walking toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Maggie asked, following him, her vision blurred by sudden tears.
Wyatt turned around on the stairs, but he didn’t look at her. “That was a crappy thing to say, and if we’re going to start saying crappy things, it’s time for me to leave,” he said. He started back down the stairs. “I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
“What did you come here for?” she called after him.
He stopped and turned around. “I came here to fix it, dammit,” he said.
“Then let’s fix it,” she said.
“I can’t fix it, Maggie! You need to fix it.” He took a few steps across the gravel, then turned around and put his hands on his hips. “Let me tell you something, lady. I didn’t care whether Lily had one breast, two breasts, or no breasts. I would have loved her anyway.”
Then he stalked to his car and got in, and Maggie and Coco watched him turn around and drive down the road, away from them, and into the twilight.
A brick pathway led from Boudreaux’s back patio to the guest cottage in which Amelia and Miss Evangeline resided.
Boudreaux’s loafers made little sound as he followed the walkway, walking between various colors of hibiscus and hydrangea. The breeze had picked up, and rattled through the trees like someone was hitting the leaves with sticks.
A rectangular shaft of light from the open screen door cut into the darkness of the back yard, and Boudreaux could hear the tinny sounds of the television floating through the open windows.
Boudreaux stepped onto the patio. He could see Miss Evangeline, clad in a fluffy yellow robe, sitting in her cushioned rocker in the living area. He tapped at the screen door, and she looked over at the door, the lamplight making her eyeglass lenses appear to be solid white.
“Amelia, open the door Mr. Benny,” she called. There was no answer. “Amelia!”
When there was still no answer, Miss Evangeline made as though to struggle out of her chair.
“It’s not locked. You want me to just come in?” Boudreaux asked.
She waved at him and settled back down, though she hadn’t made appreciable progress in rising, anyway. Boudreaux opened the screen door and stepped inside.
The cottage was small and cozy, in a Florida vacation sort of way, with wicker furniture and lots of plants and bright, tropical prints. There was a small kitchenette in one corner of the living area, and there was one bedroom off of each side of the main room.
“I don’t know where that girl at,” Miss Evangeline said.
Boudreaux pointed toward Amelia’s room. “The shower’s running,” he said.
“What?” she barked.
“The shower, she’s in the shower,” he said.
“What you doin’, Mr. Benny?” she asked.
“I’m just getting back,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Move my basket, sit down there,” she said.
Boudreaux picked up a small basket of crochet projects, set it on the coffee table, and took a seat on the wicker loveseat. A nature documentary was on the TV. “Do you mind if I turn this down?” he asked.
“Turn what down?” she asked.
He picked up the remote and lowered the volume, then rested his elbows on his knees and looked at her. “I have a problem.”
“You got more than one,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That’s true. But I’m talking about Patrick,” he said.
Miss Evangeline made that little clicking sound with her tongue that she made when she was irritated. “That boy a fool,” she said.
Boudreaux nodded. “Yes. But he’s become a dangerous fool.”
“That boy a danger nobody but his own self,” she said.
“Do you remember the man they found in the burning boat? In the newspaper?”
Miss Evangeline looked over at him, her eyes squinting behind her thick lenses as she thought. “The drug dealer man. I say
good riddance, me.”
“Yes. But I think he also tried to kill Maggie,” he said quietly.
Miss Evangeline stared at him a moment, and he looked away from her gaze, focused on the TV Guide on the coffee table.
“What he do it for?”
“It’s a long story,” he answered. “He’s trying to cover his tracks.”
“You don’t kill him already?” she asked.
“He’s been in Tallahassee since then, at some legal symposium,” Boudreaux said. “I haven’t seen him.”
“He ain’t all stupid, then,” she answered after a moment. “I be in Cuba, me, I done this. I don’t be around nowhere.”
“I think he’s losing it,” Boudreaux said.
“He losing what?”
Bennett tapped at one of his temples.
“That boy broke when you got him, Mr. Benny,” she said. “He already broke.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about nature versus nurture,” he said.
“I don’t know what it mean,” she said.
“It means—”
“I don’t say I need to know what it mean,” she interrupted. “Don’t matter. That armadillo-lookin’ woman, she ruin them boy long ’fore you marry her. T’ree year old, he already ruin, think the moon rise out between his butt cheeks, him.”
“Craig’s not so bad,” Boudreaux said of his younger stepson, though he wondered if that was because Craig was barely part of the family anymore.
“That only ’cause he got no spine,” Miss Evangeline said. “She yank the spine right out that one early.”
Boudreaux sighed and looked over at her. “I’m obliged to fix this in some way.”
“What you do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m back here talking to you,” Boudreaux said. “I want you to give me some advice, but not based on the fact that you don’t like him.”
“Like, don’t like, don’t matter, no,” she said. “What I always tell you?”
“Family,” he answered quietly. “Everything is for family.”
“For true,” she said. “You do what you got to do for your family, you.”
“It’s partly my fault.”
“Ain’t nothin’ Mr. Benny fault,” she snapped. “Boy do what he do. You fix it ’cause you got to.”
Boudreaux nodded, as Miss Evangeline squinted at the TV.
“Why these people talk so low?” she said. “I can’t understand nothin’ what they say.”
Boudreaux stared at the coffee table. “Pray for me,” he said quietly.
“I all the time pray for you,” she answered, looking at the TV. “Lord wore out from hearin’ ’bout Mr. Benny. These people talk like they don’t want me know what they say.”
Boudreaux picked up the remote and turned up the volume, then put it in her hands, kissed her temple, and headed for the door.
Maggie lay on the bed, the quilt thrown back and nothing but a sheet covering her. She listened to the steady swish of Coco’s breathing beside her, and the crickets and frogs competing for audience outside her open windows. Every now and then, something would make them go quiet, and she would hold her breath and listen for a creaking of wood that shouldn’t be there, or the snap of a twig. It was an old habit, and one she didn’t anticipate breaking.
She never heard anything out of place as she lay there, at least nothing more disturbing than her own thoughts.
For a woman of fairly strong thoughts and opinions, she’d had very little to say that night to Wyatt. She couldn’t justify driving off with Boudreaux. She couldn’t reconcile her actions of recent weeks with the woman and mother and cop she’d always thought she’d been. And while she’d been hurt and then angered by what Wyatt had said about her and David, once left alone, she had thought about that most of all.
It was like someone had taken the tarp off of something and shown her that she hadn’t really known what was underneath, like she’d thought it was a car and Wyatt had said that it was a boat. First she’d denied, because she knew better than anyone what her marriage was. But some slow moving tentacle had started swirling and undulating inside her until she’d realized, with a sharp intake of breath, that Wyatt hadn’t really been that far off.
She’d loved David, deeply, and still did. He occupied some place in almost all of her memories. But when she sifted through them, lying there in the bed that they had shared, she could not remember ever actually falling in love with him.
Early the next morning, Wyatt sat at his desk, a cold cup of coffee beside him.
He pecked at the keyboard of his computer, clicking from one page to the next, asking the computer to print out each page as he went. He’d have gotten to it the morning after Maggie had told him what Charlie Harper had said to her, if it hadn’t been for the Guatemalans.
When the printer finally stopped humming, he had a sheaf of papers in his hands. He divided them up by name.
The niggling thought had come to him when Maggie had told him. He’d remembered being frustrated that they’d not been able to find a connection between Rupert Fain, of recent burning boat fame, and Charlie Harper, the man who had tried to kill Maggie, and presumably succeeded with David.
It had reminded him of something poking at his mind from when he’d been in Gainesville, trying to find Fain after he’d melted his middleman, Myron Graham, into a pile of bones and patchwork leather. It was Myron Graham that had been niggling at him for the last few days.
He organized the printouts by name, dividing them into three small stacks. Rupert Fain, Myron Graham, Charlie Harper.
As far as anyone knew, Rupert Fain had never lived in Franklin County. But Charlie Harper had lived in Eastpoint right up until the moment that Wyatt had put a .40 caliber round in his chest. Myron Graham had lived in Eastpoint until 2009, then moved on to Gainesville, where he was hired by Rupert Fain and got on the path to a career as a chicken fried steak.
They had all done time, but not in the same facility or at the same time. There was a connection between Graham and Fain. But there was no known connection between Graham and Harper, or Harper and Fain.
Wyatt pulled the truncated, one-page arrest and conviction report from each stack and laid them in a neat row, then looked at each one. After a few minutes, he sighed.
There was a very simple reason why they couldn’t find a connection between Fain and Harper or Harper and Graham. There wasn’t one.
Wyatt stood up, grabbed his SO ball cap and Harper’s info sheet, and stalked out of the office.
Maggie tapped on the hotel room door, and Tomlinson opened it a moment later, smelling of hotel soap and with still-damp hair.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” he said as he stood back to let her in.
“Good morning, Agent Tomlinson,” she answered. She glanced over at the bedroom area, where Virgilio was sitting on the end of one of the made beds, wearing an outfit that Kyle had worn to her birthday dinner last year, when everything was normal. He was drinking a small carton of orange juice and watching Dora the Explorer, which Maggie found almost funny.
The blond female agent wasn’t there, but a young, prematurely balding man with glasses was sitting in an armchair near the front door.
“Do you mind if I say hello?” Maggie asked Tomlinson.
“No, not at all,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Maggie walked to the back of the suite and stopped by the bed. Virgilio glanced up at her, then looked back at the TV. “¡Hola, Virgilio!” Maggie said.
He looked back up at her. “¡Hola, señora!” he answered in a small voice.
“Me llama Maggie,” she said. “¿Te acuerdas?” Do you remember?
The little boy shook his head slowly, and Maggie struggled for something to say now that she was there. I’m sorry? I care? She was a stranger; he didn’t care about either.
“¿Necesitas algo?” Do you need anything?
“No,” he said politely.
Maggie nodded and watched Dora dancing with her
irritating monkey for a moment while she tried to think of something else to say. She came up empty.
“Okay, está bien,” she said finally. “Nos vemos.” See you later.
Virgilio looked up at her, but didn’t reply, and Maggie walked back over to Tomlinson. He was sitting at the small round table near the window, and she sat down in the other chair.
“So, here’s where we are,” he said. “We got people in Guatemala in contact with the kid’s grandparents. His father’s people,” he added. “We don’t have a single ID for anyone else on that boat besides Virgilio’s family.”
“Isn’t that unusual?” Maggie asked. “Wouldn’t they want some kind of ID, to try to get visas or green cards or something?”
“That depends on their situations, Lieutenant,” he answered. “You get deported back to Mexico for trotting over to Texas, you’ll probably do some jail time. You get deported back to Guatemala, especially if you’re in trouble with the government or the military police, you’re gonna be really sorry you got sent home. Equally importantly, your family’s gonna be sorry.”
Maggie sighed. “So what happens to Virgilio?”
“We don’t know that yet,” he answered. “But we do know this: Guatemala doesn’t want these bodies back.”
“What?”
“They don’t want the hassle, the expense or the local publicity,” he said.
“I should think they would want the publicity,” she said. “See how these people failed? See what happens?”
“In some cases, that might be useful. But we don’t know who these people are. There’s no CODIS in Guatemala,” he said, referring to the DNA database. “Half these people have probably never even been fingerprinted. Some of them probably never even got birth certificates. They’re of no real use to the government and they represent a significant pain in the ass.”
“I don’t understand. What happens to the—what happens to them?”
“I’m still working on that,” he answered.
Maggie blew out a breath. “Where are you on the people that brought them here?”
What Washes Up Page 9
