The two men followed the boardwalk down to the beach. They saw an old woman reclined on a wooden beach chair with a book lying in the sand next to her.
“That’s got to be her,” one of the men said.
“Well, let’s not scare the hell out of the old lady. This is probably a wasted trip anyway.”
“Sure.”
They drew closer to the woman, approaching her from behind as casually as possible. “Ma’am? I’m Special Agent Connors and this is Special Agent Jackson from the F.B.I. We’d like to speak to you.”
The old woman stayed still.
“Ma’am?”
The two agents walked around and looked at the woman from the front. Her face was grey and slightly sunken.
“Jesus,” said Jackson. “I think she’s dead.”
The woman’s eyes were closed. There was a Mona Lisa smile on her face.
Connors put his fingers to her neck to check for a pulse. The skin was cold. “Nothing.” He took his hand away. “She’s dead all right. Been that way for a few hours, I think. Okay. We have to make sure on her identity, though. Go ahead and run her.”
Jackson took a small device from his pocket and laid it against the dead woman’s arm. A reading of her DNA appeared within seconds, verifying her identity as Karen Morris. “Oh, my God. Look at that. Do you believe this shit? After all these years?”
Connors shook his head. “How the hell did she end up here? Guess we’ll never know.” He reached down and picked up the book from the sand. It had been set face down, opened to the last page. He showed it to his partner. “Look what she was reading,” he said. “Her own goddamn story, for crying out loud. This book just came out a month ago.”
Agent Jackson pressed a button on his satellite phone and began putting in a call to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, D.C. “This shit will go worldwide viral pretty damn quick,” he said.
Connors nodded. “Yeah, I know. I think Washington might have us here for a few more days to get the details. They’re not going to believe it.”
“You got that right,” said Jackson. “They will when they see the DNA results, though.”
Connors held up the book. “The author might have to put out another edition,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s going to have to change the ending,” said Connors.
Within twenty-four hours, the island had been invaded by more than fifty F.B.I. agents. They tore the beach cabin apart looking for evidence, and questioned every person on the island. In the end, all they found were a few gold Kruggerands, less than a dozen rough-cut diamonds in an old whiskey bag, and a few thousand dollars in the local island currency. No one had a bad word to say about Karen Morris, or as she was known to the locals, Stephanie Turner. A few of the older residents remembered when she had arrived many years ago in a broken-down sloop that she finally sold for scrap. She had become a fixture on the island, the lady from Canada, quiet and friendly, just a teacher looking for a nice place to live. She was soon accepted and no one asked her many questions about her past. When they did, she always had a reasonable answer. It worked that way on the islands. Once you were accepted, your previous life was unimportant and no one really cared anyway. People often came because they wanted to escape the drudgery of life on the mainland. They figured she was just another one.
The F.B.I. also found a small 9mm Beretta pistol, rusted and useless from long-term exposure to the salt air. It was later linked to several killings that had occurred almost sixty years ago in Seattle.
The End
About the Author
Julia Broussard lives in Seattle with two cats and a parrot she calls Grace. She is a supporter of both the ASPCA and Amnesty International. Revenge Story is her first published novel. She is currently working on another crime novel to be released at the end of 2015, titled Ozette. She can be reached through her publisher, Adventure Books of Seattle, at [email protected].
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