Dangerous Waters

by Toni Anderson

  He pushed past bushes and saplings that were growing up along the thin trail and stopped in a small clearing. The exact spot where Bianca and little Tommy Edgefield had been found murdered thirty years ago. Sorrow sat heavy inside his chest.

  What had happened to the little girl?

  He remembered her vaguely, had been jealous of her even, with her sweet mommy and respectable dad. But the mystery of Leah Edgefield was probably the saddest thing of all. They’d found her jacket and a drag trail. Probably a cougar. But no one really knew. She’d just disappeared.

  A flash of yellow caught his eye. A tightly bunched bouquet of daffodils lay at the base of a towering pine.

  Grief squeezed his heart like a vise. Thom had been through hell all these years and still left tributes to his lost family. Some days it broke his heart.

  What would that sort of love feel like?

  Finn didn’t know.

  His family made dysfunctional look beautiful. He had friends from the army. Good friends. Soldiers he’d die for. Just the same way he had Thom and, in a twisted way, Brent. But what would it feel like to really fall in love? To commit to a woman and have her love him back?

  He swallowed. Pushed away all the images that wanted to crowd his mind. That wasn’t for the likes of him. A boy who’d grown up in poverty and desperation and had been lucky to make it through alive. It would never be for the likes of him.

  He shoved back through the bushes and started pushing hard, finishing his long run in a full-out sprint with every heartbeat reinforcing the terrible feeling of loneliness and need that seemed to fill his core. Concentrate on the big picture. Concentrate on keeping Thom and Brent out of jail and then he could think about his own needs and wants. Later, when all this was over, when Holly was long gone. When everything got back to normal, then he’d think about what he wanted from his life. The sharp edge of a Pacific breeze made his eyes water. He blinked it away, turned around, and started another lap.

  “You can verify that?” Holly asked.

  “I just did.” Thom’s secretary, Gladys Hildebrand, gave her a hostile look over square-framed glasses. “I can get you twenty witnesses for both of them, plus the boats were in full use that day. No way could they have gone off diving when we had so much to do here. This isn’t a holiday camp, you know.” Clenched teeth, slight growl. Pissed as a rattlesnake.

  Holly hesitated, her pencil hovering over her notepad. “Do you have a problem with me trying to catch a killer, Gladys?”

  “I have a problem with you going after two innocent people while the real murderer is probably in Mexico by now,” the woman snapped.

  “This will help eliminate them from our inquiries,” she said patiently.

  Gladys huffed. “Until the next time.”

  Holly reminded herself not everyone liked the cops. “Is the professor in?”

  “He’s down in the lab.” There was an edge—not just of anger, but also of hurt—in the woman’s voice that was starting to make her uncomfortable. Like she was the bad guy rather than the person who’d stuck a six-inch blade through Len Milbank’s ribs.

  Holly tried a little small talk. “Did you have any serious damage from the fire last night?” Her question was met by stony silence. Christ.

  “Right then.” Holly blew out a tight breath. She loved her job. Really, she did. She loved champagne too, which also gave her a headache.

  She headed off to find the professor. Police work often involved asking the same questions of different people over and over and seeing if the stories matched. She headed outside into the cool, oppressive west coast morning. Dew was so thick it hung on the tips of the short green grass like teardrops. She skidded on the loose gravel and swore. Her bruises were healing, but her neck was stiff with whiplash, and sharp movements still hurt.

  She dialed her father on the walk down the hill.

  “How’s my favorite girl?” He picked up on the first ring.

  “Almost as good as my favorite deputy commissioner.”

  He laughed. “How’s it going out there?”

  She put her hand on her head—she’d left her cap behind at the hotel, which reminded her she still needed to get her stuff from Finn’s cabin—and wished she could lie. “It’s gonna be a tough one to crack, Dad. IFIS are trying to figure out a way to haul Milbank’s boat to Port Alberni without losing any potential evidence. The Coast Guard will probably have to tow it around.”

  “Tell them to cut down trees if they have to.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately the boat is in a protected old growth forest, so I think the government might have something to say if we did that. Anyway, they called me first thing to say they’d do an initial examination in situ. DNA, fingerprints, etc.” She could hear her father talking to someone in the background. He must already be at work. She stared out across at the Coast Guard station. Thick clouds banked on the horizon. Another storm heading this way.

  “What makes it tricky is the victim’s organized crime buddies probably couldn’t have pulled off stashing his body in the shipwreck. We’re pretty sure Milbank had someone in the town working with him smuggling either drugs or counterfeit money.” That was a new angle Sergeant Hammond had come up with after talking to his contacts. “Apparently, there’ve been a few phony ten-dollar bills surfacing in Victoria. Good forgeries, not easy to spot.”

  “I’ll talk to ICET,” her father said, referring to the RCMP’s experts on counterfeit currency. “See if there are any known links to Vancouver Island.”

  “Until we figure out who Milbank was working with we’re stuck looking at anyone able to put on a dry suit.” Which was almost everyone in this part of the world, Holly thought grimly.

  Her father cleared his throat. “Couple of loggers found a black Ram truck burned out near Saltiss Lake.”

  The information had her flashing back to the accident, to the moment her car had gone over the edge and started smashing through the forest. Her heart contracted forcibly. “Anything there?”

  “We had IFIS all over it, but whoever torched it did a good job.”

  They had nothing on the person who’d tried to kill her. If only she’d stopped sooner. Got out of the vehicle and confronted the attacker. He’d have mown her down like a fly hitting a windscreen, but she might have been able to give him a few bullet holes in the process. “IFIS sure are busy right now.”

  “I’m sending some extra people to help out. Keep following the leads. Something will come up.”

  “I don’t want to let you down.”

  “Honey, you will never disappoint me. Never.”

  But that wasn’t necessarily true. “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, Hobbit. Now go solve this case.” He hung up.

  No pressure.

  She looked up at the squat utilitarian building and tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked. She retraced the steps Edgefield had guided her along before. Through the labs and up the stairs. The slightly odd chemical smell and white noise of the freezers made her feel on edge. Suddenly the hair on her nape snapped to attention.

  “Boo!”

  She pulled her gun and whirled around.

  Professor Edgefield stood there with a huge beaker held in both hands and a shocked expression on his face. “I—er—sorry.” He looked terrified, of her, of the weapon, of the consequences of his ill-thought-out actions.

  Holly’s heart was still jammed in her mouth, and she couldn’t speak for fear of yelling at the idiot. After a few moments of staring at each other, she stuffed her gun where it belonged and gritted out, “Don’t ever do that to someone who carries a loaded pistol. Ever. Again.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Right. I won’t.” He walked past her and into the lab that held his precious sea slugs. Holly followed, but her heart still raced.

  The tank was shrouded in a black cloth.

  She’d planned on putting him at ease, buttering him up. Mice and men and all that. “Have you confirmed you found a new species
yet?” she asked, trying to regain her equilibrium.

  He glanced over his shoulder, looking torn between wanting to talk and worried he was going to say the wrong thing. “I have a colleague in Edmonton who’s going to run some DNA samples for me. I don’t want to kill any of these specimens if that’s all there are in the world. So he’s going to try to get a profile off the slime first.” His eyes brightened. “Do you have any idea when we can dive the wreck again? I want to do a population survey.” He frowned, clearly lost in his underwater world. “I should start grid diving that cove and seeing if they are anywhere else in the area. It would make sense for them—”

  “Professor.”

  He blinked.

  “I’m not sure when the wreck will be released. I’ll talk to the Coast Guard and my boss about it, but—” He opened his mouth to speak but she rolled right over him. “What I really need is a detailed account of your whereabouts on Monday the second and Tuesday the third of this month.”

  He closed his mouth and frowned. “Did you ask Gladys? She knows my schedule—”

  “I asked Gladys.”

  “Oh.” He looked uncertain. “What did she say?”

  Holly couldn’t believe this guy ran an internationally renowned marine lab. “I need you to verify what she told me, sir.” Her voice softened. “I need your help proving you didn’t have the chance to kill Len Milbank.”

  “Ah.” His eyes narrowed as he thought about it. “OK, let me figure it out. Last week was…” He concentrated so hard his pupils contracted. “I remember now. Last week was a nightmare. We had two university field trips and a short school program booked. Then, about an hour before they were all due to arrive, one of our chief instructors took seriously ill. She needed a chopper to get her to the hospital in Victoria. She’s still sick actually. Had an emergency appendectomy so she has a solid alibi for that whole week. Nasty thing, a ruptured appendix.”

  Patience. “So you were in the lab all day, teaching?”

  He shook his head. “I was in the lab, then the lecture theatre. I even took a turn out on the boat, taking some of the kids dredging. And I had to keep up with all the other BMSC stuff too.” He smiled. “I think I was in bed after midnight every single day that week, and I was so frustrated.” He shook his head.

  “Because…?” she urged.

  “Because I was desperate to get back to these babies.” He indicated the tank with his hand. “It’s possible they’re a previously undocumented morph of Polycera tricolor, but not likely. Another option is they hitched a ride on that ship and formed a new isolated colony when it sank, but they aren’t familiar to me, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s nudibranchs—” He broke off, pinching his lips together before turning away from her to look out the window. “I know it’s not life and death, but it’s all I’ve had since my wife died.”

  It was the sadness that drenched his whole being that got to her. Holly felt the questions on her tongue dry up. What did you say to a man who’d lost everything? Delivering death notices was probably the hardest part of the job. She hated it. They all did. And looking at the aftereffects of violent loss that feeling was only ever going to get worse.

  “You gave me hope when I first saw you, Sergeant Rudd.” His eyes were clear and bright. “That was unfair of me. You have your own family, and I would never steal you away from them the way someone ripped mine away from me. But if you get the chance to look at my wife and children’s case,” he swallowed audibly, “would you do it?”

  The quiet desperation, the newfound dignity dug into Holly’s heart and wrenched at her soul. “Send me the file. I’ll look at it when this is over.”

  Her phone rang and she checked the caller display. Finn. Her pulse skipped, but she was glad to have an excuse to leave Edgefield to his sea slugs before she promised him something else. Like a goddamn DNA sample.

  Finn stood on Gina Swartz’s front step and fought the urge to vomit. Holly answered her phone on the second ring.

  “One Deerleap Road. Turn left at the crossroads. Get up here now.” He hung up.

  There was a pain in his chest, a burning that throbbed with every beat of his heart. Anger and grief rode his veins, but he was dry-eyed. Clearheaded. Like the bastard who’d stabbed an innocent woman through the heart with a blade.

  Knife to the chest, just like Milbank. But Milbank was a depraved sonofabitch who’d deserved every inch of steel. Gina had been kind. Nice. What kind of monster would do that to a fucking librarian? He looked out at the forest that surrounded her house. No, not a monster, just a man. Ordinary and evil. Invisible.

  He walked over and sat on the swing she’d set up to face the sunset. You couldn’t see the ocean from here, but it was tranquil and quiet. Real quiet. No one would have heard her scream, although he’d be surprised if she’d gotten the chance.

  Tears wanted to fall, but anger pushed them aside. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen violent death. Hell, he’d killed people more efficiently than someone had disposed of Gina. But they’d been military targets, and he’d been under orders and had never taken their lives for granted. Never forgot those he’d killed.

  A bald eagle screeched as it flew overhead with a dead rabbit hanging from its talons. The town had its fair share of predators, but this was different. Someone in this dark little place was an ice-cold killer, and the thought unsettled him all the way to his gut.

  They’d had the occasional unexplained death over the years. Was it possible they’d had a serial killer in their midst the entire time? That they were so green, this person chatted, joked, drank with them every day? Hiding the compulsion to destroy beneath a thin layer of sociability?

  Had he or she killed Thom’s family thirty years ago?

  He heard a rumble of tires coming along the road. Gina would have been tuned into that rumble. She’d have heard her killer. Had she known him? Was it her new boyfriend? Or her old one?

  Shiiiiiit. He hated himself for the thought, for that smidgen of doubt.

  Holly pulled up in a new RCMP 4x4. He stuck his hands in his pockets and watched as she jumped out of the cab. She’d picked up Malone, thank god. He wouldn’t want her going in there alone, not that he’d be able to stop her. The guy shot him a look, and Finn motioned him toward the house with a stiff nod.

  He wished it wasn’t Holly investigating this stuff, seeing this carnage. But Christ, she wasn’t the sort of woman to sit home baking muffins. If she were, they’d never have met.

  The wind chilled the sweat on his skin. He was starting to get cold. He didn’t move. Didn’t care. Brent…How can I tell Brent Gina’s dead?

  He’d loved her. He’d always loved her. No way would he have killed her, not even over another guy.

  But Brent had a notorious temper. And he was rash. Shit. He squeezed his eyes shut. What the hell should he do? Tell Holly that Gina and Brent used to be involved? If he didn’t, someone else would, but this was Brent he was talking about. His brother, the man who’d killed their father. The man who’d saved his life.

  Gina was dead.

  He buried his face in his hands. There were no easy answers to this mess.

  Holly came out of the house a minute later, although it felt like hours since he’d last seen her. A lifetime. The expression on her face was stark, the wind tugging her hair out of its neat braid. It was surreal to see her standing like that, beautiful and whole, knowing that Gina was just a few yards away laid out like a sacrificial virgin.

  Holly stood on the back step for a very long time and stared at him. He stared right back.

  “What are you doing here, Finn?” Her voice reached across the clearing and she followed it. Walking slowly.

  “I stopped by to talk to Gina.” Was he a suspect for this too? Fuck. Probably.

  He didn’t even care anymore. Maybe he should confess to keep Brent out of jail? But then the real killer would still be loose, and who knew who would be the next target. Thom? Laura? Holly? He closed his eyes. He knew almost everyo
ne within fifty miles. He should just know who’d done this.

  When he opened his eyes she was standing right in front of him, lines around her eyes making her look tired. Bruises making her look fragile.

  The beat of silence was tense.

  “I thought you’d be at work.” She checked her watch. If Brent had done this, and no way did he believe his brother was this sick, but if he had, he deserved to go back to prison. He deserved a lot more.

  He let his head fall back so he was staring at the canopy over the swing. Poor Gina with her little love swing. “The students have lectures till midday. I was up all night, so I figured I’d skip off this morning. I wish I’d stayed in bed.”

  “Did you find out anything about the fire?” He could feel her mentally working her way around him, trying to get him to relax and spill his guts.

  He shook his head. “You think it’s connected?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot of weird stuff happening around here lately. It can’t always be this exciting.”

  It wasn’t. “You think someone used the fire as a distraction?” He frowned.

  Holly looked away. Not answering. “Did you know the victim?”

  Victim.

  “We grew up together. We were friends.” He sucked in a deep breath because this was the moment. “She was Brent’s high school sweetheart. They were an item for years.” He saw her eyes narrow and loathed himself now more than ever. “I’d hoped to figure out a way to maybe get them back together again. She’d mentioned she was seeing someone else.”

  “Who?”